


Unthinkable

by sallyapostrophes



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Aurors, BAMF Ginny Weasley, Department of Mysteries, Drarry, Extremely Slow Burn, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Ginny Weasley/Severus Snape are BFFs whether he likes it or not, Ginny is not putting up with your shit, Het, I Will Go Down With This Ship, M/M, Necromancy, Slash, Snarlie, Wolfstar's Pesky Sex Magic, arcane magic, autistic characters, bamf characters, casefic, competent characters, lithrosexual asexual identity, past polyamory, sex-positive asexual identity, snape/charlie, wolfstar, yes that is plural
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:00:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 55
Words: 153,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22178950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sallyapostrophes/pseuds/sallyapostrophes
Summary: A Department of Mysteries/Auror casefic, in which Ginny becomes a force to be reckoned with, Remus is already a force to be reckoned with, Sirius is a competent adult, but shhh! don't tell anybody!, Severus gets adopted, Draco grows the fuck up, Harry figures it all out, Hermione had it figured out in fourth year, Ron sees more than he really wanted to, thanks, Charlie is a good big brother, and Luna is the hero that no one deserves.Guest-starring Severus' feelings, Kreacher the House Elf, and Bellatrix Lestrange from beyond the grave.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Severus Snape/Charlie Weasley, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 138
Kudos: 197





	1. Severus Snape and the Surprise Toast

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first chapter of my first ever fanfiction. If you see any glaring mistakes, please feel free to message me. Also, I am not from the UK, so geographical information may be inaccurate...I did the best I could by googling information about towns and villages near London.
> 
> This story has a lot of flashback in it, so I tried to denote flashbacks by putting them in stars. Hopefully it's not confusing.

To any outside observer, Severus Snape’s blank mask conveyed nothing but a placid calm. It was with no small amount of trepidation, however, that he found himself in the booth of an all-night muggle diner, seated across from none other than his former student, Ginny Weasley. She was perched on the very edge of the booth, her feet tucked beneath her and her bare legs sticking to the cracked vinyl. She was wearing a dark green tank top, black shorts, and a pair of heavy, battered hiking boots. She carried a rucksack in place of a purse, and her Weasley-red hair was pulled back into a tangled ponytail.

She had the tail end of a fearsome sunburn; her fair skin was freckled and still peeling across her nose and shoulders, and her hands and fingernails were grubby. She was peppered with small, thin cuts, dirty and scabbing. It was 15 after 2 AM, and she was sprawled across the booth sipping a steaming mug of black coffee, her relaxed posture at odds with her hard gaze. The look was familiar- he had taught the lot of the Weasley clan, had seven years to quietly observe the personalities and behaviors of each of the brood. He was used to poorly concealed dislike being leveled at him from the entire succession of Weasleys. But her muted frown and furrowed brow were a far cry from the raw fury she had directed at him the last time they stood face to face.

**************************************************************************************************************************************************************

The door to his (Dumbledore’s) office was thrown open and Amycus Carrow strode through, clutching Longbottom by the throat with one hand and hauling a thrashing Ginny Weasley along behind them with the other. The boy, still shaking from the Cruciatus curse, was thrown to the floor in front of the polished oak desk; the girl was shoved roughly through the door after him. Carrow’s face was sporting a bloody lip and a large purple bruise beneath his left eye, and his robes bore straight, thin rips which exposed raw welts on the flesh beneath. He was in a frothing temper, a cruel smile on his face as he trained his wand on the girl, who was now standing over Longbottom, one foot planted on either side of his prone form.

Before he could utter a curse, however, there was a rumbling sound, and a burst of flame shaped, oddly, like a some sort of goat came thundering up the corridor and through the office door. Carrow pitched himself to the side just in time to avoid being hit full in the back by the flames. The ram cantered around the room, catching the rug aflame, and lowered his head as though to charge, before flickering out of existence. Severus wondered, belatedly, what sort of spell had produced the creature. It was like nothing he had ever seen. Somewhere out in the hall, an explosion sounded.

“Leave them to me,” Severus commanded, jolted from his musing. “Find the individual responsible for that…disruption, and bring them to me as well.”

Carrow gritted his teeth, loath to be deprived of his retribution, but at the sound of a second, larger explosion, he turned on his heel and stormed from the room. Severus turned to gaze at the wayward pair before him. Longbottom lay face down on the floor, Weasley still standing above him. He strode forward, hands behind his back, staring at the girl. She straightened, lifted her chin, and met his gaze, blue eyes blazing, a sneer twisting her face. She was wandless, defenseless, and she knew it, but, like a cornered animal, she was fearless in her resignation. He wondered if she was responsible for Carrow’s bruises. He wondered what she would do if he were to draw his wand and continue Carrow’s ministrations. Would she attack him with her bare hands at the sound of Longbottom’s screaming? She was fully aware that he could kill her. Would she throw her life away to spare the boy a few moments of suffering? How pathetic. The girl was prepared to die looking him in the eyes, and her bravado wouldn’t even spare her friend. How like a pair of Gryffindors.

A Slytherin would have kept a low profile, waited, sussed out the opponent’s weakness and waited for an opportune moment to rise up. A Slytherin would have never charged into danger until victory was guaranteed. He held the Weasley girl’s eyes, drew his wand and immobilized her with a lazy flick. He knelt before Longbottom, gripping the collar of his robe and flipping him over. His face was a swollen mass of purple, his mouth a bloody smear. Severus frowned. A third explosion sounded from the grounds below, strong enough that he felt it through the thick stone walls. Outside his window, he could see the flaming creature charging across the grounds after someone. He sighed. Wordlessly, he released the girl.

“Miss Weasley. You will escort Mr. Longbottom to the hospital wing. After he has been seen, the two of you will report to Mr. Filch. I believe he will appreciate your assistance polishing the scorch marks from the castle walls.”

He turned on his heel and strode across the room to retrieve his cloak. It looked as though he would need to rescue Carrow from whatever it was that was on fire and chasing him. He could feel the girl’s gaze burning into his back as she heaved Longbottom up and staggered through the door and down the corridor toward the infirmary.

**************************************************************************************************************************************************************

The memory unsettled Severus, reminding him that he had never interacted with Ginny Weasley outside the context of a teacher-student relationship. When he had caught sight of her, sitting tucked into a corner booth picking at the crust of her toast, his surprise had overridden his caution and he had strode over to slip into the seat across from her. Now that he was here, he realized he had not planned an explanation for his sudden presence. She looked at him and wordlessly conjured him a mug, filling it from a metal carafe on the edge of the table. He looked around the empty diner, but the only other occupants were the waitress and the line cook, both deeply engaged in what looked to be a game of double solitaire. He picked up his mug and inclined his head in thanks.

She had been at his trial, along with the rest of the Gryffindor war heroes. He had sat, bound at the wrists and ankles, in a straight, hard-backed chair, before the full Wizengamot. He hadn’t expected any measure of leniency. Hell, he hadn’t even expected to be alive.

**************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Naturally, it was damned Potter and his damned mangy godfather he had to thank for that. He had been ready to die, on the dusty floor of the Shrieking Shack. He had known he would die. All he wanted to do was live long enough to see his memories safely into Potter’s hands, to fulfill his oath to Lily and embrace whatever fate awaited him beyond death. But Potter, instead of getting on with his task, had run for his godfather, and he had been dragged from unconsciousness by Sirius Black cutting open the twin punctures and sucking the venom from the wounds.

He had woken up in the crowded Hogwarts infirmary, and was told by a harried-looking Madam Pomfrey that he should have died; the venom had gone too far. But Black had bastardized the rune for the dissolution of a union, carved it into the skin of his neck with a silver knife, and forced the unstable rune to part the venom from his blood. The magic used to vanish the venom had been so desperate and complex that Madam Pomfrey remained in shock that Black hadn’t accidentally vanished all the blood from his body.

At first, he had been angry. He could have died a hero’s death, passed into oblivion regarded as a martyr. He knew that Potter’s overbearing sense of justice would have ensured his post-mortem absolution. Now, he would be dragged through the courts, at the mercy of the Wizengamot. All the cruelty he had allowed to play out before him and all the cruelty he, himself, had committed- he would be judged for it. By the court, by the whole of wizarding Britain. Even if he escaped the law somehow, everyone would know what he was. He bore the proof on his arm. He was angry- Black and his friends had stolen the peace of his youth, once. Now Black had stolen the peace of his death. His part had played out. He was unnecessary now. Why drag him back to a life that no longer held a shape or purpose?

As he looked out at the crowded ward, the bodies looked so small. It was clear that many of the underage students had snuck back to fight. He saw children among the injured, and he saw that some of them were no longer children, but bodies, surrounded by other grieving, wounded children. Children he knew. He had never cared for children, and he knew he was not well-suited to the task of teaching, but sometimes his students would surprise him, and he would be filled with a quiet pride in spite of himself. These were children he had watched grow up. That thought made something twist in his chest.

He saw Black then, scrambling from bedside to bedside, barking orders to a pair of St. Mungo’s junior healers. He was bleeding heavily from his own injuries; the exhaustion in his posture was poorly concealed, and it was obvious that he was forcing himself to stay upright. He ran past Severus’ bedside, and Severus flung back the bedsheet and stumbled after him.

Dennis Creevy was lying prone on the floor, clutching the limp form of his blood-soaked older brother. Black was on his knees, frantically muttering _prohibere crueti,_ the countercurse to an anti-coagulating hex, and holding the boy’s pale hand, a look of hellbent protectiveness on his face. Severus seized Black by the collar and jerked him aside roughly, flicking his own countercurse straight at Colin Creevey’s chest, and the snarl of anger on Black’s face died instantly at the sight of the boy’s wounds, which immediately stopped bleeding and began scabbing over.

“It was one of Dolohov’s,” Severus snapped at Black, who was pushing himself to his feet. “He liked to watch people bleed. He designed the spell not to break under any variation of _prohibere cruenti._ The boy would have bled to death before you figured out how to break the curse. _”_

Dennis Creevey was staring up at him in watery-eyed wonder. He broke his gaze, turned on his heel, and began to storm away when Black reached out and grabbed his arm. A flash of anger gripped him, and he recoiled at the touch.

“Snape, I… thank you,” Black said, looking solemn.

“I am recovered sufficiently to assist in brewing,” Snape replied flatly. “You appear to have run out of blood-replenishing potion almost entirely.”

He walked away before Black could reply.

Severus found the cauldrons being manned by Remus Lupin, who was covered in so much gore he would have been unidentifiable beneath it, were it not for the fact that he was wearing the same fraying jumper he had worn for all the seven years he was at Hogwarts. He was stirring one cauldron with his wand and another with what looked like it might once have been some kind of sword and cursing prolifically at something that was boiling over behind him.

Severus stepped in wordlessly and settled the roiling cauldron, a nearly-burnt burn salve, which he salvaged by adding additional frog spawn and a dollop of aloe.

“LUPIN!” he barked, and Lupin jumped, splashing his boiling potion over the side of his cauldron.

“Severus! Thank God! Do you know a spell to extract Essence of Murtlap? We’re out of everything but the Murtlap leaves, and we haven’t the time to press them and steam them-”

Severus flicked his wand at a massive heap of heather-gray leaves in a large stone basin, and they began to sweat their milky-gray essence into the bottom of the bowl.

“Lupin! Just what do you think you’re doing! Is that supposed to be an anti-venin? Anti-venins must all be stirred with a silver rod!”

“Well I can’t very well touch a silver rod, can I Severus?” Lupin snapped.

“What the hell are you stirring it with, then? If it contains aluminum or tin, it can-”

“It’s a lance. Sir Cadogan won it off one of the suits of armor in a duel, and-”

Severus snatched the lance from Lupin and examined it critically.

“Sir Cadogan? That mad portrait?” he asked. “How did a portrait…actually, no...I’m sure I don’t want to know. Anyway, you’re in luck, as this lance looks to have been forged well before aluminum or tin were widely used. Anything but silver reduces the potency, however. You will need to administer the anti-venin at-”

“One and one-third times the standard dosage to maintain potency, I know,” Lupin said, cutting him off. “Poppy told me. Can you take a look at this blood-replenisher? I’m not sure I added the goat spleen at the correct step.”

Severus pushed Lupin gently to the side and began muttering an incantation over the steaming cauldron. Within minutes, the potion was glowing the correct shade of amber, and he had three more cauldronfuls bubbling along beside it.

Just as he dared to breathe a sigh of relief, he heard screaming, and Lupin sprinted away to pull a tourniquet around the stump of Marcus Flint’s leg. He was not surprised to see the boy fighting. The Flints had been quietly working against the Dark Lord ever since their oldest son was killed in his service. He was a bit more surprised to see that Flint's head was being cradled against Oliver Wood's shoulder. He hadn't seen that one coming. 

He didn’t catch sight of Lupin again until Molly Weasley turned up and ordered him to go find something to eat while she watched his cauldrons. When he found Lupin, the man was holding a sobbing Parvati Patil, as both of them stood over a body so mangled, he couldn’t recognize it. He turned away and ran into Black, who tipped a shot of strengthening solution into a steaming cup of tea and pressed it into his hands wordlessly before jogging over to Angelina Johnson, who was being carried on piggyback by Katie Bell. Moments later, he saw the back of Black, sprinting after a stricken-looking Lee Jordan. He caught sight of Poppy, who was attempting to _rennervate_ Susan Bones from a _cruciatus-_ induced seizure, and she set him to work brewing the strongest anti-convulsant he could muster.

By the time the last patient had been stabilized, night had fallen and passed, and the sun was just breaking over the clouds. He had been up, at this point, for 48 hours straight, and when Black flopped down beside him on Poppy’s narrow couch and sagged against him, he accepted it without animosity.

Colin Creevy had lived. Marcus Flint had lived. Angelina Johnson had lived. Susan Bones had lived. Fred Weasley, who, Black told him tiredly, had been crushed beneath an explosion of stone rubble, and whose shattered ribs had punctured his lungs, had somehow, miraculously, lived. Lupin came over, threw his arms around Black and gasped “she made it, she’s going to be OK, she’s going to be OK” against the dirty fabric of Black’s shirt. Whoever _she_ was had lived.

But they still weren’t safe. Too many of the Dark Lord’s servants had escaped. They may have lived, but they still weren’t safe. The decision struck him at that moment. He would not allow any more evil to fall upon those children. He took up the mantle of double-agent out of obligation to Lily, determined to protect her son as he had not been able to protect her. To the same end, he allowed himself to be a pawn in Dumbledore’s long game. But this burden, he chose for himself. He would hunt down every remaining Death Eater, and every dark wizard that followed, until no more children were dragged into shadows.

**************************************************************************************************************************************************************

And here he was, three years later, scraping a pat of butter across a slice of toast in a diner booth across from Ginny Weasley, whose presence here, he knew, could not possibly be a coincidence. The village of Sway was both the site of a documented Death Eater cell and the last known location of Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley. Their disappearance was classified to all but the highest levels of Ministry intelligence, and though a missing-persons case was under Auror jurisdiction, the Chief had pulled him off his previous assignment and asked him to discreetly investigate.

_It figures it would be Potter. It’s always Potter._

_Ugh._

The thought of it made him sick. Potter and Weasley, with their celebrity status, had run off and joined the Aurors without even sitting their NEWTS, and knowing the high standards at the Ministry, Shacklebolt probably sent them chasing after Death Eaters without even completing training, and they had gotten themselves captured. And, in true Ministry fashion, the Auror office seemed to be unable to find hide nor hair of them. They were having a right job of it, keeping it out of the papers. Every Auror in the DMLE was pulling overtime looking for them.

_How do you manage to lose two entire human beings? God. What a circus._

The Unthinkables, at least, operated almost entirely outside the sphere of Ministry influence. They had only the Chief to answer to. He stifled a sigh. Were it not for the fact that the Chief had no idea who he was, he might have thought it some kind of sick joke, being sent after Potter. Again.

_Fate, then. Some sick twist of fate._

He bit into his toast and studied Ginny Weasley. She was buttering her own slice and maintaining her silence.

He knew perfectly well what happened to the missing boys- they had gotten in over their heads on an Auror assignment and gotten themselves captured. He was sure of it. What was more interesting was how Ginny Weasley had come about the location of their disappearance. That information was highly classified…sure, she had a few schoolmates in the Auror force, but none of the junior Aurors would have been privy to classified files. Granger might have been able to get access…she had joined the Unspeakables and advanced in rank rather quickly…but the last he’d heard, Granger worked in the Time Room…she would have had a hard time justifying access to Auror case files that had nothing to do with her research.

Granger always had been infuriatingly meddlesome, but…would Granger leak classified Ministry intelligence? And if it wasn’t Granger, it had to be someone else with a high-level security clearance. There was a leak in the Ministry somewhere, and he needed to figure out the source. Ginny Weasley, war hero or not, was an untrained civilian and had no business poking around near a Death Eater cell. Surely Granger would have the sense to know that passing that information to someone as brash as Weasley would do nothing but endanger her. Then again, there was no guarantee the leak had come from a benign source…Weasley could be walking into a trap at this very moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on my brand new shiny [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I finally broke down and made one :)


	2. Severus Snape and the Struggle with Civil Conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is rather short. I tried to break it up a little because chapter 1 was getting unwieldy.

Weasley refilled his coffee for him, smiling blandly. He knew this game. The first one to speak put himself at a natural disadvantage; he would be obligated to reveal some bit of information. She was doing surprisingly well. Most people, he found, were uncomfortable with long silences. He had years of experience staring expectantly at students until they squirmed, cracked, and babbled all their secrets. Sure enough, after a few more moments, she began to shift in her seat.

“Professor Snape,” she said finally. Interesting. She had used his old title. She would be more likely to defer to him if he maintained this formality.

“Miss Weasley. What a… fortunate occurrence. I always find it illuminating to run into my former pupils.” “Tell me,” he continued. “What brings you to this charming village at 2:00 AM?”

“I’m vacationing,” she replied with a straight face.

“Vacationing?”

“Yes, sir. It’s when you go away from your job for a while, and-”

“I’m familiar with the term, Miss Weasley,” he snapped. “It’s only that I was under the impression that you were the starting seeker for the Hollyhead Harpies.”

“I am, sir.”

“I see. Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but is this not peak Quidditch season?”

“Yes, sir. But I’m on the bench for the rest of the season. I was injured- got knocked off my broom by a bludger during a practice. The broken legs and collarbone were easy enough to fix, but traumatic head injuries are a bit trickier,” she said conversationally. “I’m out of the game for now, so I figured I may as well go on vacation, you know- see the sights and all.”

He could feel his left eyebrow shoot up.

“The sights? The village of Sway is hardly a bustling metropolis, Miss Weasley.”

“Well, I’ve always been fascinated by agriculture, you see,” she said seriously. “I’ve always wanted to see how muggles are able to get all the fruits and vegetables into their supermarkets without levitating them. Did you know that they dig holes in the ground with shovels to bury the seeds? Can you imagine?” she blinked up at him with wide, blue eyes, and the expression was so similar to that of her twin brothers that he had a series of vivid flashbacks involving Argus Filch’s cat, a sticking charm, and a culpability that he couldn’t quite prove. Oh yes. She knew something. He was certain of it.

“What brings you here, sir?”

The question snapped him out of his reverie.

“What?”

“What are you doing here professor? In Hampshire, I mean. Are you visiting the Sway Tower?”

“No. Potions research.”

“That sounds interesting. I rather liked potions in school.”

He bit back a scathing retort about her abysmal potions performance during school, mostly because it wasn’t true. She had not quite the natural curiosity and instinct that her brother Charlie had, but like Bill and Percy, she was intelligent, capable, and he could seldom find fault with her work. He had been indifferent to Bill, who was a model student, and he had actively disliked Percy, who, despite his intelligence, had scrounged for praise and recognition. Charlie, however, had been a delight to teach, and indeed, though he had only truly liked a handful of the students he had taught in his entire career, Charlie Weasley was among the few that he liked best of all.

Charlie had been athletic, smart, gifted like his older brother, but unlike popular, outgoing Bill, Charlie had been socially awkward and painfully shy. He was bookish, with a bad habit of trying to read while walking, and routinely bumped into other students, walls, closed doors, and once, Severus himself.

He was also a perceptive child. He had picked up on the fact that Severus hated to answer questions during class time, not because he wanted to stifle the children’s curiosity, but because he disliked the feeling of being stared at while he talked. So the boy would often stay after class, pulling a chair up in front of Severus' desk, and asking about variations on ingredients, and alchemical theories, and the intersections between potions and charms, in which he also excelled. He had always privately hoped that Charlie would end up pursuing his academic gifts, but it was clear by the way he stared wistfully out of the castle windows and returned from his daily visits to Hagrid covered in dirt and with leaves in his hair, that he would never end up chained to a desk or a lab benchtop.

Truly, the caliber of the Weasley children fell sharply after Charlie- pandering Percy, the inscrutable monsters that were the twins, and Ronald, who had been thoroughly unremarkable, had all melted into the rest of the drudgery of his mediocre pupils. Ginny, however, had been bright, and the quiet competence so reminiscent of Charlie had made him grudgingly respect her. It was short-lived, however. Though he could seldom find fault with her academically, she turned out to be a stereotypical brash, melodramatic Gryffindor.

“What are you researching?”

“Hmmm?” he asked, his head snapping back towards her.

“What are you researching, sir?” she repeated.

“Why, Miss Weasley. I had no idea you were interested in experimental potions research. I am here to collect a particular variety of mushroom, native to the region and said to grow around…areas of agricultural by-product. Locals are said to use the mushroom medicinally, to induce a state of temporary psychosis. I believe that, if combined with feverfew and holy basil-”

He was cut off by the sound of her muffling a snicker.

“Is there something amusing, Miss Weasley?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	3. Ginny Weasley and What Was Not the First Time She Had Stumbled Upon a Major Breakthrough in the Case by Sheer Coincidence

She listened to his familiar drone, trying to identify patterns in his word choice, inconsistent information, context clues.

_Mushrooms? Is he for real?_  
  


She pictured Severus Snape, hunched awkwardly in his muggle jumper and slacks, picking around in a field of cow patties, and she bit back a snicker.

“Is there something amusing, Miss Weasley?” he asked.

“Sorry sir, I was just…having a hard time picturing you digging through agricultural by-product looking for shrooms.”

“Well, I’m afraid I haven’t been having much success. I have yet to locate an acceptable sample.”

She regarded him for a moment. There was no way it was a coincidence, him being here. Harry and Ron had vanished here, and all intelligence pointed toward Death Eater activity in the area.

After the battle, he had seemed to genuinely grieve for everyone they lost. He had helped out in the infirmary. Dennis said he saved Colin’s life. She had believed him when he said he’d been a spy. She even understood why he had to kill Dumbledore. She had testified for him at his trial, telling how he had tried to spare the Hogwarts students from the worst of the Carrows’ cruelty.

But why was he hanging around the village of Sway? Did he know something about the disappearance? That information was classified to everyone but the Unthinkables and the most senior Auror staff. As far as she knew, he had no connections in the Ministry. After his trial, he had opened up a struggling little potions shop in a dusty corner of Diagon Alley and all but disappeared into it, hexing anyone who showed up to check on him. His fearsome determination to avoid the people who should have been his friends was excessive, bordering on suspicious.

And then there was the Veritaserum. She and Remus had chased down a lead on Yaxley, who had been sighted by the muggle police squatting in the cellar of an abandoned farmhouse, and discovered that someone had been there before them. When they arrived, Yaxley had been a corpse for several days. They hadn’t been able to work out who killed him- it was either a muggle or someone who was highly adept at erasing their magical signature. But they had found a vial of Veritaserum at the scene- not a remarkable discovery in itself, but she noticed the vial was the same cut crystal as Severus Snape’s private stores. She knew it because he had questioned her under Veritaserum from that same vial during her horrible sixth year. They had assumed it had been left over from when Snape was brewing for Voldemort during the war.

But now, she wondered. Was he still in communication with the Death Eaters? Why else would he be here? He knew something. This was a lead; she was sure of it. But she had to be careful. If he was still working with the Death Eaters, he was dangerous. She wasn’t naive- she knew she was no match for him in open confrontation.

_I wish Remus were here._

But there was no way to get a Patronus to him without Snape realizing. No- she was on her own. She had to get him talking somehow. His alibi was pretty far-fetched; she thought he must be losing his touch with a story like that. But he had said it out loud, so now he had to stick with it or admit he had been lying. She could use that to her advantage.

“Uhm…Professor?” she asked.

His coffee cup was raised halfway to his lips. He set it down.

“Yes, Miss Weasley?”

“Maybe…I can help you? Sir? If you’re looking for mushrooms, I mean. I’ve been here for a couple days now, and there’s a little farm near the edge of town. But…Well, it’s just that it’s not exactly legal, sir. The muggles, you see- they use that kind of mushroom for…things.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Why Miss Weasley. Surely you didn’t mean to imply that you’ve been partaking in illicit muggle substances for recreational purposes?”

She mustered up a guilty look.

“Please, sir,” she said, blinking up at him. “Don’t tell my mum. She’d go berserk.”

He seemed to be buying it- his face had relaxed a bit. Foolish of him, but understandable. The little girl act was probably more believable for him since he had actually known her as a little girl.

“Miss Weasley. Surely you are aware of the dangers of ingesting a muggle hallucinogen?”

“Well, you know what they say, sir.” She flashed him a grin. “You only live once.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	4. Severus Snape and the Chat About Mushrooms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am hoping to update fairly quickly up to the point where I have typed everything I've already written. This chapter is mostly dialogue, but we'll see some plot movement coming soon.

_What are you playing at?_

That she had been tripping on shrooms, he could believe- he had certainly done plenty of experimentation when he was younger. But he knew perfectly well she wasn’t vacationing. She knew about the disappearance, and he needed to know how. He also needed to get her out of harm’s way; the middle of an active investigation site was no place for a nosy Quidditch star.

He would play along until he could suss out the source of her information-that was a complication that would need to be addressed immediately-then he would see her to safety. She had already thrown a generous handful of muggle bills onto the table and was hitching her rucksack onto her back. He followed her out of the diner and through the dimly-lit parking lot. They jumped across a drainage ditch and ducked behind a boarded-up shed, and without any warning, she seized his hand and apparated them.

The second he felt the ground beneath his feet, he flung her hand away and staggered several paces back. He supposed he should have expected it, but it was so uncommon for another person to touch him that he found it unsettling. It was highly unpleasant, the feeling of warmth that lingered after a touch. Even now, he could feel the impression of the girl’s hand in his, and as always, he was struck by the bizarre urge to reach out for the receding hand and pull it back. He hated that feeling and generally did not allow others to touch him if he could avoid it.

She didn’t seem to notice him jerk away, or if she did, she didn’t comment on it. But she did begin to comment on a number of other topics, keeping up a running stream of commentary, prattling on about Quidditch, her chaser’s strike ratios, whether a racing broom was too sensitive an instrument for a beater to use. He found that the chatter was pleasant, and listening to Quidditch talk from an industry professional made the topic rather more interesting.

“…your team?”

“What was that?” he asked.

“I said, who’s your team? Like what Quidditch team do you support?”

“Well, the Harpies, I suppose,” he replied, surprising himself.

Other than the Slytherin house team, he had never much cared about Quidditch, but he did listen to the end of a Harpies match over the wireless at the Hog’s Head once, and whenever he saw her face in the Quidditch section of the _Prophet,_ he would check the score to see if her team had won.

“Really, professor?” she asked, beaming.

“Well, yes. I’ve never been to a match, but I follow them in the paper. It’s nice to read about the success of a former pupil.”

She looked so genuinely pleased that he found he did not regret the admission.

“In that case, I’ll send you tickets to the next match! They give me a free ticket for everyone in my family, but Charlie’s in Romania, Dad and Perce are usually tied up at the office, and Bill's been out of the country for a while- he’s been working on contract with the DMLE, you know. Since the war, there’s been all this cursed stuff turning up. Mum comes now and then, but Quidditch isn’t really her thing. It’s usually just Harry, Ron and the twins, and we give the extra tickets to whoever else wants to come.”

His ears perked up at the mention of Harry and Ron, but she continued her stream of conversation, chattering away about how unfair it was that Kingsley Shacklebolt wouldn’t give Percy the night off to come to her last match, especially since Kingsley had been at the match himself.

“Did you play for Slytherin when you were at school, sir?” she asked, her head tilting up to watch him as they walked.

He searched her face for any sign of condescension, but of course, she wouldn’t be mocking him. There was no way she could have known about his legendary uselessness on a broom.

“No. Suffice it to say that my talents lay firmly within the realm of the academic. Though I did enjoy supporting my housemates from the stands. With both feet on the ground,” he added.

She looked up at him again and giggled.

“Something to say, Miss Weasley?” he asked, his tone silky.

“No, sir. I’ve just never heard you make a joke before, is all.”

They had reached a fork in the dirt road, and Weasley crossed the road to take the path that led through a copse of trees.

“Sir? What made you decide to start studying mushrooms? Are you trying to make a potion to trigger hallucinations?”

“Certainly not!” he replied.

“What for, then?” she asked.

“Are you aware of academic conventions surrounding original research?”

“Uh…not really.”

“It is highly unusual for a researcher to discuss the details of his work, even with his colleagues. In fact, most researchers keep their notes written in code and ward their journals. Academia can be cutthroat, Miss Weasley,” he said with a wry little smile. “Funding for original research is highly competitive, and it is not uncommon for less scrupulous researchers to try to claim credit for the ideas of others.”

“But professor…isn't it a bit…counterproductive for everyone to keep their research secret? Like, what if you get stuck on something and you need help?”

“Ah, well. That is one of the major downfalls of academia as an institution. It is not entirely unheard of for researchers to work in pairs or even small groups, but for the most part, the advancement of magical knowledge is a solitary and jealously-guarded activity.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I shouldn’t have asked about your work then. Sorry if I was nosy.”

“It’s quite alright, Miss Weasley. Since your interests lay outside the realm of academia,” he said, ignoring the glare she shot him, “I think I can safely tell you that I am studying the effect of muggle psychoactives and their hallucinogenic properties. I believe that hallucinations may be rooted in magic, even though the substances that induce them are not.”

“So you’re saying that even though mushrooms aren't a magical plant, the hallucinations may have something to do with magic?” she asked.

“Essentially, yes,” he replied.

“But professor? What about when muggles hallucinate? How can a hallucination be magic if a muggle can see it?”

He looked at her, unable to stop the pleased little smile that flickered across his face.

“Well, that is the question I seek to answer, Miss Weasley.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	5. Ginny Weasley and the Search for Agricultural By-Product

Snape seemed pleased to be talking about his research, which was interesting, seeing as she had never seen the man display anything other than disdain. She didn’t even know the man was capable of feeling pleased. She guessed he must not have many chances to talk about his work, and for a moment, she felt a pang of sympathetic loneliness. She stamped it down quickly, however, reminding herself that it was his own fault he had no one to talk to.

Kingsley, Remus, Tonks, and Dad had all tried to visit and been hexed out of his shop. Percy’s letter inviting him to the Order of Merlin ceremony had been returned unopened, and he had been the only Order of Merlin recipient not in attendance at the ceremony. Fred and George had owled him a box of complimentary Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes products and had received a chilly response requesting that Misters Weasley and Weasley kindly refrain from sending boxes full of exploding objects to his shop, which was filled with delicate and volatile substances. Luna had gone to check on him, having heard from Fred and George that he was suffering terribly from an infestation of Nargles, and when she found no sign of him, she had been inconsolable, convinced the Nargles had carried him off. The only person who had yet to surrender was Mum, who had worked out how to bewitch casseroles to fly through his wards, up onto the roof of his shop, and down his chimney. 

They were nearing the end of the copse of trees and would soon be passing the barn that housed a small herd of cows. The pasture there was filled with the kind of _agricultural by-product_ that grew Snape’s mushrooms; she knew this because she had stepped in it on her way into the woods beyond the edge of the property.

It was here that she and Remus had chased a lead from muggle law enforcement- the locals had been reporting mysterious flashes of light coming from the area. The prevailing rumors in town pointed toward alien spacecraft, but Ginny was putting her money on magic. A wide meadow about a mile past the tree line yielded clear signs of dark magic. After clearing away the scorched brush, she had uncovered a series of runes that Remus said looked like some kind of binding spell, and the telltale coppery tang of blood magic hung in the air. She had sketched down the runes and their positions and taken soil samples, but after three days of tracking, Remus had been unable to pick up a trail.

And every night, she had snuck back to the clearing after Remus was asleep and scoured the hundreds of acres of woods beyond the meadow, flying low by broomstick, and traversing the thickest parts on foot. Whoever had been in the meadow was either gone or really good at hiding. Remus had already packed up and returned home to Grimmauld Place, intent on researching the rune patterns. If they could determine the origin and purpose of the runes, he figured, they might gain insight into the identity of their caster.

Ginny had remained behind to naturalize the area- to remove any lingering traces of the magic Remus had used to try to track the caster of the binding spell.

*************************************************************************************

They were sitting on the deck in the back garden, under the shade of an umbrella, watching Neville as he crouched on bent knees in the full sun, pulling weeds around a row of something she thought might be cactuses. “While all magic leaves traces,” Remus said in his Professor Lupin voice, “most of it is not unique- a stupefy spell or a tergeo will leave the same magical impressions, regardless of who casts it. But spells that are crafted by an individual leave traces of that individual’s magic.”

“How?” she asked.

“Well, think about it. Each person has a unique magical signature, like a thumbprint. Some people may have very similar signatures, especially if they are related, but each person’s is unique. When you use you use common magic, that magic has been influenced by the magical signature of every person who has ever used it before. When you use a spell that you have modified or created, the only magical signature that has influenced that spell is your own.”

She hummed in acknowledgment, as Neville wiped his dirty hands on his trousers and strode over toward them.

************************************************************************************

Tracking magic was exceedingly uncommon; like metamorphagi, most people who were capable of the skill were born with it, and Remus’ natural skill had been greatly enhanced by his lycanthropy, though he hated to admit it. And ironically, the very magic he had created to pick through the strands of ordinary spells and suss out the personal magical signatures was, itself, so powerful and unique to Remus that it left a blazing signature for the few witches and wizards capable of following it. Ginny, taking no chances, had taken up the task of obliterating the traces of his magic very time he used it.

The task was simple enough; to eliminate the traces of a caster’s magic, she simply had to flood the area with a common, untraceable magic. She first thought of _Lumos,_ but decided against rousing any more rumors of aliens. She settled on _Protego,_ gripped her wand in her hand, and pointed it at the ground. She pulled at her own magic, letting all the memories she associated with protection gather at the forefront of her mind. She remembered thunderstorms she had waited out wedged between Fred and George, and Charlie snatching her out of midair the first time she ever fell from a broom, and the feeling of waking up cocooned in the thick down blanket of her Hogwarts four-poster beside Luna, when she used to sneak into Gryffindor tower at night and crawl into bed beside Ginny. Then she pushed at the magic, releasing it from the shape of a shield, and allowing it to relax into something amorphous, which she pushed into the Earth. She pushed the magic deeper into the ground, watching it spread across the floor of the meadow and out into the trees. She forced it into the air. She pushed her magic into the spell until she was sure she had flooded out every trace of Remus’ magic.

When she finally released it, she sagged in exhaustion, and sat on the ground with her back against a tree trunk, trembling. She had forgotten how much energy it took to change the shape of a spell. Remus always made it look easy.

She realized that she had acted a bit foolishly just then- she had driven herself to exhaustion in a patch of woods that had, at some point, been home to a Death Eater camp, and she was alone, without Remus to watch her back. She could almost see his disapproving face.

“This is why, Ginny,” she muttered to herself. “This is why you keep ending up in trouble.”

She pushed herself to her feet, suddenly feeling a sense of urgency to distance herself from the dark expanse of the trees.

“Coffee,” she said aloud to herself. There was an all-night diner in the village. She could stop for a cup before heading back home.

And here she was, almost back to where she had started, Snape in tow. She realized they had been walking in silence for some time, but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he was being almost friendly…or at least tolerant. She decided to push her luck.

“Hey, professor? You said that most people ward their research? What do you do to yours? Curse anyone who reads it to go blind or something?”

He regarded her for a moment, no doubt weighing the odds of her ever being able to use any of the information he provided to her. Good thing she was apparently a brainless Quidditch jock because he decided she was harmless enough to confide in.

“No, Miss Weasley, although that particular defense is a fairly common one. I write my notes using a series of alpha-numeric characters, encoded through three separate sets of arithmantic matrices. I then curse the box in which I place my notes so that anyone not keyed to the ward will be hit with a spell that turns their hands bright orange. The spell is almost impossible to remove by anyone who isn’t me, so if someone attempted to plunder my research, they would be stuck with orange hands for the remainder of their lifetime.”

At this, she laughed out loud.

“That sounds like a prank Fred and George would come up with,” she said, grinning.

“It is hardly a prank, Miss Weasley,” he replied with a tentative smile.

They had passed the barn and arrived at the edge of the pasture.

“Well, here we are,” she said, looking at the ground around her. “All the agricultural by-product you could possibly want.”

“Indeed,” he replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	6. Severus Snape and the Time He Seriously Questioned How Any Child Sorted Into Gryffindor House Survived Into Adulthood

The girl had surprised him throughout their conversation: not only did she seem to have abandoned any suspicion of him, but she was also genuinely interested in his research. He didn’t mind sharing the general premise with her, confident that she was hardly clever enough to make anything of it, and he found that it was sort of nice to have someone to talk about his work with. He was no closer to discovering the source of her information, but he appreciated the unexpected bonus of actually locating a sample of psilocybin mushrooms. That part had not been an act- he really was researching them, and did need a workable sample. She surprised him again by crouching down beside him and scanning the ground intently. Finally, his curiosity got the better of him.

“Not that I object to a second pair of hands speeding this task along, but what exactly is inspiring this sudden desire to pick mushrooms at almost 4 in the morning?” he asked.

She looked up at him again, another one of the hard looks that he was coming to realize were consideration rather than anger.

“Did you know that some muggles use this stuff to make themselves hallucinate on purpose?” she asked, ignoring his question.

“I am familiar with the practice,” he said.

“And some muggle Healers make it into a tea that can help madness...or grief.”

Perhaps he had done well to confide in her earlier. It seemed to have put her in a trusting mood. He knew he had to push for answers now before the mood passed.

“Miss Weasley?”

“Yes, professor?”

“Is that what brought you here? To try to ease your grief?”

Her expression was stuck somewhere between confused and suspicious.

“My grief?”

“Yes, Miss Weasley. I read in the paper that your brother Ronald and Harry Potter had disappeared during an Auror investigation. Surely you must be grieving?”

“What paper printed that? Ron and Harry are out of the country on a diplomatic assignment. And actually, I was about to-”

But what Miss Weasley was about to do, he would not discover. She broke off mid-sentence and stared out across the field, to the woods at the edge of the property.

“Did you see that?” she asked.

“See what?” he replied.

But her gaze remained fixed on the tree line before them. Then, moments later, he saw what had caught her eye- a flash of light, clearly the result of a spell. Before he could stop her, she had jumped to her feet and was sprinting across the pasture, towards the woods.

She was running. Across open ground. With no cover. He hissed her name in the loudest whisper he dared, but of course, she didn’t hear him. And he had no choice but to follow her because he could not allow a civilian to run into what might be a den of waiting Death Eaters.

And now he was running after her, across open ground, with no cover, like a sodding Gryffindor.

By the time he caught up to her, she had passed the tree line and was darting into the woods.

_Why are you still not taking cover? Why haven’t you even disillusioned yourself?_

Then suddenly, she veered away from the path and began to slow; no longer crashing through the brush, she began to pick her way almost silently, over downed tree limbs, through patches of thorns. Almost like she already knew where she was going…interesting.

She dropped into a crouch and began to half-crawl toward an outcropping of rocks covered by a fallen tree. Beyond that, he could see the edge of a meadow, and as he hastily disillusioned himself and crawled after her, he could hear voices. She was peering through the gaps in the rocks, and he craned his neck to see what she was peering at. Death Eaters, all in masks and full regalia. And beside him, Ginny Weasley seemed curiously unsurprised.

This was no coincidence- Death Eaters at the site of Potter’s last known residence. The DMLE had probably dispatched Potter and Weasley to investigate- stupid, to send two of their most junior Aurors with no backup. He could just imagine it: impetuous, arrogant Potter, demanding he be given an assignment because he was the Chosen One. And those idiots had bought into the boy’s hype and sent him running, no doubt face first like a Gryffindor, into danger. And he had dragged along his mediocre Weasley sidekick, _and_ this time they didn’t have Hermione Granger to come and bail them out. He cursed Potter. He cursed the DMLE. And he cursed the stupidity of the girl next to him, who had somehow gathered classified Ministry intelligence and fooled herself into thinking she was going to pull off some kind of dramatic rescue.

He would have to get them out of here. After the girl was gone, he would come back and finish investigating. But as he was solidifying a plan in his mind, Weasley started creeping forward. Away from cover! He made a move to grab her and drag her back, but she was just out of reach. As he crawled toward her, he heard what had drawn her from cover.

“…don't understand it,” came a voice. “The circle is still here, but the Lover’s Reprisal is…gone. It’s like something washed it away.” The voice tugged at him, a sycophantic whine that he knew from somewhere but couldn’t place.

“A heavy rain can wash away an earthbound magic,” said a second, heavy Eastern-European accent. “You must not have bind the spell deep into the Earth. The rain wash it away.”

“There hasn’t been any rain. And I bound the Lover’s Reprisal using Arkay’s Third Convention. There’s no way it got washed away in the rain.”

“It was the girl.”

“What girl?”

“The girl has been stomping all over woods all night looking for us.”

“The little redhead? Now way it was her. This was powerful magic.”

“The wolf then. You should have let me kill them. Now you will have to perform ritual over again.”

“Get the fuck out of here, man.” A third voice, this time an American. “It’s bad enough you lost them two cops.”

_Two cops…could he mean…?_

“You start killing more people and we’ll have the entire British police force out here.”

“Forget that,” snapped a woman’s voice. “What are we going to do about the ritual? If we can’t complete the Lover’s Reprisal, Bella’s stuck in there.”

“Sod the ritual,” snapped another voice, also familiar. “I say we leave her in there.”

“Do not forget your promise, my friend. If your Bella is stuck in the Beyond, so is Illeana,” replied the European.

By this time, Severus could identify five separate voices, all of them talking over each other in an increasingly indecipherable jumble. He fought off a chill at the name _Bella, it isn’t her, Bella is dead._ He had seen her body lowered into the ground. And the Lover’s Reprisal…he had never heard of such a ritual, and his knowledge of even the darkest magic was comprehensive.

“OI!”

He jumped, startled. The shout had come from…behind them? He couldn’t believe his own foolishness. The American had circled behind them while he was stuck in his musings. The whole lot of Death Eaters turned, seemingly in tandem, to stare at them. No…not _them._ He was still disillusioned and behind the cover of the rocks. _Weasley._ She was frozen, staring at the man as he strode toward her.

“Shit, you guys couldn’t be any stupider. If she was a cop, we’d all be in the shit right now,” he said in a slow drawl.

He was ten feet from her.

“Good thing it’s just some chick. What’re you doin’ out here all by yourself, hun?”

Five feet.

“Damn, you’re a looker too. Legs for days. Makes me hate that I have to kill you.”

He was three feet from her now. Severus could see the man’s hand twitch for his wand. But, quick as a flash, Weasley’s own wand was in her hand.

“ _Levicorpus_ ,” she shrieked, ripping the man from the ground and slinging him through the air into the cluster of his companions. Confused, the lot of them began firing spells at random, and he saw a figure fall, a victim of friendly fire.

 _“Lumos maxima,”_ the American roared. Suddenly, the cover of darkness was lost to the blinding ball of illumination hanging in the air above them.

“Oh shit! There’s two of them!”

Severus let the disillusionment fall, knowing it to be useless under the direct glare of the harsh light. Weasley was on her feet, catching a cutting curse and flinging it back at its caster. He flicked a dispelling charm at an entrail-expelling curse. Weasley threw up a protego as three killing curses came from separate directions. Her shield shattered, knocking her back under the force of the combined curses. Severus blasted a _sectumsempra,_ which sliced through the figure closest to them. The fallen Death Eater's companions, spurred into action, began slinging curses and hexes with a ferocity that he could barely match. Even with Weasley beside him, knocking spells from the air, they were being quickly overpowered. 

Then their opponents began to press closer together, two keeping a shield up while the third raced to pull their fallen comrade from the line of fire. Weasley took advantage of their distraction and sent an impressive reductor curse at the shield, shattering it, and looked to him expectantly. He realized a split second too late that she had been giving him an opening, and before he could recover, he felt a shock of pain cut across his chest. Weasley’s eyes went wide as a mist of blood clouded the air.

He hit the ground and rolled over just in time to knock a killing curse out of the sky in front of her, but he could do nothing to stop the _incarcerous_ that immediately followed it.

The caster began a slow advance, halting his two remaining companions with an outstretched hand. He stopped ten feet from Weasley, who was struggling futilely against her bonds, and removed his mask.

His skin was sun-browned and pitted, hair and eyes dark, face lined with heavy creases. He was not a Death Eater, or at least not one that Severus recognized, but it was clear from his predatory gaze that the man was dangerous.

“Well,” he said, in his heavy accent. “It is our little red-headed friend. Where has your wolf gone? And who have you brought for us?”

He grasped his wand, aimed it at her, and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	7. Ginny Weasley and The Pantry

The _incarcerous_ charm was winding its way around her wrists and ankles, and she was driven to her knees. She felt a rising bubble of panic as she saw the man smiling in front of her. Her mind flashed back to the aftermath of the battle of Hogwarts and the broken expression on Remus’ face as he stared out at all the casualties, and she felt a pang of guilt knowing that he would be the one to identify her body.

_Remus…how the fuck am I supposed to get myself out of this?_

But it was the memory of Sirius, crouched down and speaking gently to an exhausted, sweaty Luna, that snapped her out of her reverie.

“Don’t plead,” Sirius had said. “Don’t try to reason. Assume no one is coming to save you. Don’t hesitate.”

Her wand was still in her hand. She may be bound, but she wasn’t helpless.

“I should have killed you before, but no matter,” her attacker said. “You will die now.”

“Fuck that,” she replied.

Her magic had pooled in her palms, and though her hands were bound behind her back, she pushed the spell through her wand.

“ _BOMBARDA,”_ she roared, and as the spell ripped from the tip of her wand, she felt for the shape of it, pushed, and redirected it to split around her and reform. Then she let it fly, pouring as much force as she could gather into it.

Caught off guard, her attacker was hit square in the chest, and the _incarcerous_ broke as he was blasted back. In front of her, from three directions, jets of green light barreled down on her. Too late. Too slow. She was going to die. Then something grabbed her from behind, and she hit the ground inches from where the killing curses struck. Snape! He was standing over her, dripping blood, shaking with the strain of keeping his shield together under the barrage of green light.

She reached for him, wrapped her hand around his ankle, focused on _home,_ and disapparated.

The space in which she reappeared was not intended to accommodate two people. She was pressed up against a wall, Snape’s elbow jammed into the back of her neck. She tried to turn to face him, but managed to bump her head into his jaw.

“Who in the hell apparates into a room with no windows,” Snape muttered.

She ignored him, trying to squint in the darkness but unable to make out a hand in front of her face.

Snape was kneeling on the ground, groping around for something. She tried to back up, but the backs of her thighs hit something sticking out from the wall. She inched forward, feeling blindly for a door, and ran directly into Snape, whose face was level with her crotch.

“Dammit, Snape,” she yelped, shoving him away hard.

“Do be careful, Weasley,” he hissed, and she heard him collide with something that collapsed to the floor.

Just as she was beginning to feel the bubble of panic again, she saw it! A thin sliver of light- there must be a door there!

“Bombarda!” she barked, and the door was blasted from its hinges. She stumbled forward, into…

“The kitchen?” she said aloud, bewildered. Sitting at the kitchen table, covered in a layer of disintegrated wood, was Kreacher, clutching a mug of steaming tea in one hand and wearing a horrified expression on his face.

For a moment, Ginny was frozen, lost to her confusion. Then she heard the rasping of Snape’s breathing as he crawled from the pantry, and she snapped back to herself. She could smell the tang of blood. He looked…bad. There was a deep gash in his chest, spanning from somewhere below his left shoulder all the way across his torso, ending just above his right hip. She could see the oily sheen of the layer of fat exposed beneath the razed skin. His face looked white as a corpse. Suddenly, she felt rather guilty for shoving him.

She jerked back toward Kreacher, who was looking back and forth between her and Snape, slack-jawed. Striding forward, she grabbed his tiny, bony shoulder and gave it a shake.

“Kreacher! _Go_ and get Sirius. And Luna. Quick!”

“Y-yes, Miss. Kreacher will get Master Sirius. Master Sirius will…”

He trailed off, looking back once at Snape, and disappeared with a little ‘pop.’

“OK, professor. Let’s get you up off that floor, sir,” she said, turning to Snape, who was struggling to sit upright.

She grabbed him by the armpits and hauled him up, wincing sympathetically at his hiss of pain. They staggered over to a padded kitchen chair, and she eased him into it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Kreacher. He just wanted to drink his tea in peace. 
> 
> Next chapter starring Remus' disapproving face. Also, Sirius and Luna.
> 
> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	8. Severus Snape and the Problem with His Organs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luna gives no fucks. Luna will tuck you into bed, and you will like it.

It was all he could do to remain upright in the chair as Weasley knelt to examine his wound. He could hear a clamoring sound, somebody running down stairs, the sound of yelling.

“OUCH! Kreacher! You’re not helping.”

“Master Sirius must go down to the kitchen immediately, sir.

“I got that the first time, Kreacher!”

“Sir must hurry! Quickly!”

“I’d be hurrying faster if you weren’t clinging to my back!”

Black appeared in the doorway, clad in only a pair of boxer shorts, peeling his house-elf off of his tattooed chest, followed closely by Lupin, who at least had the decency to throw on a pair of pajamas.

“Ginny, what the…Oh, shit! Snape!”

Black thrust the flailing elf at Lupin and rushed over.

“Snape…Severus? Can you tell me what happened?”

“Cutting curse,” he muttered. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth. There was something else he needed to tell Black, but the words wouldn’t come together. Black’s face was starting to blur. He could see halos of light around the edges of his vision.

“…need to get him to St. Mungo’s.”

“no way of knowing…not safe to apparate him…”

“No,” said a third voice. He opened his eyes and squinted. Luna Lovegood…Potter’s odd little tagalong. What was she doing here?

“We can’t take him to St. Mungo’s,” she said. “They probably won’t even treat him.”

“He’s a war hero,” Lupin cried. “He got an Order of Merlin!”

“So did you, Remus. But they won’t treat you there either,” Lovegood replied.

“Luna’s right,” said Black. “He hides out in that shop for a reason. People still see him as Dumbledore’s murderer. We can’t take him there and risk being turned away.”

Black was standing over him.

He felt a muddled trepidation. There was something wrong, something unsafe. He remembered Black, fifteen years old, standing over him. Black had taken his wand. Black had hit him, and his head was so heavy. He tried to move and found that he was too dizzy to sit up. But this was a different Black. This Black wasn’t going to take his wand.

“Snape? I’m gonna have to get this jumper off you, so I can look at that cut. Can you lift your arms?”

“Don’t be daft, Black,” he muttered thickly. “I hardly need you to take my clothes off.”

Black stepped back, palms raised in submission. He eased his jumper off, then grabbed the hem of his frayed, oxford button-down and shucked it over his head. The shirt stuck around his ears, and Black moved forward to free him. His shaking hands stopped at the last layer, a thin, dingy undershirt.

Twenty-five years ago, Black was sneering at him as James Potter hoisted him into the air and pulled his shirt from his body. He can hear the echo of their laughter, mocking.

He peels the undershirt up, and the air is cool against his exposed skin. He remembers the Shrieking Shack. He is dying. Black’s mouth is hot on his neck, sucking out the venom.

He searches Black’s face, but there is nothing but a detached professionalism, and inexplicably, this angers him. He remembers the sneering boy that Black had been, and tries to transpose the boy’s hateful expression onto the clinical gaze of the man before him.

_Pasty Snivellus…I wonder if his knickers are as dirty as his hair…_

He wants to hex Black. Black’s hands are on his bare chest, pushing him gently to rest against the back of the chair. Lovegood is beside him, eyeing the wound critically. She leans in toward Black, and he tries to follow their hushed conversation.

“…can't seal the wound until we rule out symptoms of internal bleeding,” Black said.

“But this as a laceration- the primary concern is mitigating blood loss. Internal bleeding…resulting from blunt force trauma…,” Lovegood replied.

“We can’t just assume…damage is limited to the laceration without…specific curse. _Sectumsempra_ is… slashing type…causes a laceration resulting in a curse to wound, but…”

“But other cutting spells create a wound or gash by exerting the pressure of the spell against an object, like _relashio._ ”

“Exactly- look at the depth of the wound…deeper than typical slashing-type curse…implies that the wound could have been inflicted by blunt force.”

He can feel the warmth of fingertips, Lovegood’s this time, pressing against the hard muscle of his stomach, and he can’t bite back the hiss of pain.

“Presence of abdominal tenderness, wound depth, low systolic pressure- all indicate internal injury.”

“We’ll have to scan for the source of the damage.”

Lovegood met his eyes. All trace of the dreamy, distant girl who used to leave wreaths of braided clovers on his desk in the dungeon were gone, and her face was sharpened by focus. He looked away, up and over her shoulder at Weasley and Lupin, who were hovering anxiously in the kitchen doorway.

“Severus,” said Lovegood evenly. “I am going to have to use my magic to look under your skin, at your organs, to check for internal damage. Usually, this is done under a sedation spell, but you’ve lost so much blood that we can’t risk using the spell. If your blood pressure were to fall any further, it would kill you.”

She had taken the same tone one might use to calm a frightened child.

“It doesn’t hurt, but it feels a bit strange, to have another person’s magic so close to your own. Do I have your permission to continue?” she asked.

“Just get on with it Lovegood,” he snapped.

He would not allow himself to be infantilized by a girl who used to wear radishes in her ears.

Lovegood picked up her wand and began a whispering an incantation he had never heard. When he felt Lovegood’s magic seeping into his skin, he was belatedly grateful for her forewarning. It was, indeed, uncomfortable, so foreign and invasive that he struggled to master the impulse to jerk away. He could feel the fleeting impressions of her magic taking shape in his mind like images gleaned from Legilimency. There was a coldness to it, like the crisp coldness of snow. It felt awake. There was a tinkling laughter somewhere in it, and the undercurrent of grief, and the feeling of being picked up and carried, the way his father had carried him when he was small. There was the sound of waves crashing, the smell of the ocean. There was shattering glass. It was full of the smell of fresh, hot ink. And it was touching him. He wanted to recoil, but he sucked in a breath and stilled himself.

“A level 5 splenic vascular rupture, active bleeding extending into the peritoneum,” she rattled off efficiently.

“Ok, I need you to hold the indicator spell while I probe for the source of the rupture. I can stanch it and vanish the blood already in the abdominal cavity. As soon as I do that, his systolic pressure will fall. You’ll have to cast _auget sanguinem pressura_ to keep it stable while I close the laceration.”

“You’ve given me all the hardest parts,” she chided gently.

“You’ll be fine,” Black replied.

“Snape,” Black began. I have to use my magic to heal inside your body like Luna did. Is that OK?”

“Please,” Snape hissed. “Just do whatever you have to.”

“OK. Here goes.”

The feeling of Sirius Black’s magic was so deeply uncomfortable that he white-knuckled the arms of the chair to keep himself still. It was like a fathomless black expanse, like the bottom of the ocean. It was longing and guilt and a vicious loneliness, and it hurt. It was stronger than Lovegood’s had been, washing through him, buffeting his own magic to the side, and he felt that he would surely be crushed beneath the weight of it. He was overcome by a mad desire to reach out and hold on to someone, but he didn’t have anyone to reach for. There was no one who would reach back.

Just as he thought he would be lost beneath it, there was a silvery flash, and something lunged at the blackness, which roiled amorphously, then receded. The formless silver twisted, assuming the shape of something canine, snarling and snapping at the darkness. Then it became a ram. Then a stag, a Cooper’s Hawk, a pack of dogs, a lion, a fox. A doe. He sucked in a breath. It flashed and changed, again and again, and every time the silver changed form, the dark mass was pushed back until he could see gentle sunlight and the colors of autumn. He smelled damp earth and rain, engine oil, a lit cigarette, and the scent of melting wax. He felt the soft cotton of a worn jumper. He felt like running, like chasing someone. Like the exhilaration of jumping into a leaf-pile as a child, casting the fallen leaves into the air and watching them fall. The blackness was gone, and he felt free. And then there was a love, fearsome and vast and crushing, and it hurt almost as much as the blackness.

Just as he couldn’t stand it another second, Black’s magic pulled away, and he was left with a feeling of bereft loss, like he wanted to grab the magic and pull it back against him.

Gradually, he became aware that the pain was gone from his body. Black stormed from the room, with a worried-looking Lupin on his heel, and Lovegood was pouring a blood replenishing potion down his throat.

“You should be fine now,” she said, and there was just a hint of that old, airy quality back in her voice. “You lost a lot of blood. Ginny’s gone to make you a bed. You’ll have to stay with us for at least a few days until the mended tissue fully heals. And try to stay in bed for at least the next 48 hours. Too much exertion could cause your injuries to open back up.”

She grabbed his hand and lead him slowly down a dimly-lit hall. He followed her weakly.

“If you need anything, you can call for Kreacher, and he’ll get it for you or fetch one of us. He’s quite friendly now, you know. He didn’t much like us at first, but after the battle, the Quibbler ran an article about the valiant elf-heroes of Hogwarts, and he came around rather nicely after that. He clipped the article out and everything. Keeps it in a frame in his room under the boiler. Right next to his photo of Bellatrix Black and his pair of Lady Black’s underpants,” she said conversationally. “Oh, here we are.”

She opened the bedroom door and ushered him inside.

“That door opens into a washroom. There are towels there, and Ginny’s laid out some muggle clothes. I think they might be Dean’s. Or maybe Harry’s. It’s hard to keep track.”

She led him over to the bed, and despite being covered in dried blood and grime, he collapsed into it with his shoes on.

“Thank you for your hospitality, Miss Lovegood,” he said and found that he meant it. “I believe I will retire now.” He could see the sun rising in the sky, and guessed it must be around 6 AM.

Instead of turning to leave, Lovegood ambled over to a chest at the foot of the bed, pulled out a plush, feather-down blanket and pulled it over him, then perched on the edge of the bed and blinked down at him.

“There is a reason that strong healing magic is usually performed under sedation. Having someone else’s magic so close to your own can be unsettling,” she said, fluffing a pillow behind his head. “Sirius’ magic, especially, can be a bit scary, but when you get to know him, you’ll see that it’s really quite beautiful magic.”

She brushed his matted, crusty hair from his forehead. He flinched at the contact, but could not muster the energy to berate her properly, and submitted to the gesture grudgingly.

“I’m sorry if that was difficult for you. And please don’t mind Sirius. His bedside manner is usually very good, but I think something in your magic was difficult for him too.”

She pulled the corners of the blanket up around his shoulders and planted a soft kiss on the top of his forehead. Then, before he could tame his bewilderment into a response, she slid off the bed, drew the curtains shut, and padded from the room.

As he lay in the darkened room, he felt the lingering warmth from where Weasley had grabbed his hand, and where Lovegood had kissed his forehead, and where, three years ago, Black’s mouth had been pressed against his neck. All of the touched places were just slightly warmer than the rest of his body, and he was seized by the familiar need to reach for someone until he could stand it no longer, and he grabbed his own hand in the other and held it.

And as sleep crept in on him, he tried to wrap his sluggish mind around the idea of a world in which Luna Lovegood had tucked him into bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	9. Draco Malfoy and the Inferi Fuckup

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back at Grimmauld Place, Snape sleeps heavily. Meanwhile, several countries away, Draco Malfoy tries to navigate his tenuous apprenticeship to Charlie Weasley.

The bustle was the same, Draco noted as he stepped out of the fireplace and shook the ashes from the hem of his robes. Even at 10 AM on a Tuesday, the International Floo Regulatory Branch was brimming with activity, as harried travelers stumbled into fireplaces, toting crying children and juggling their brightly-wrapped holiday wares. The office was decked with the customary wreaths and baubles and boughs of holly, and there was a door with a particularly malicious looking bit of mistletoe that the entire office seemed, by some unspoken unanimous agreement, to be avoiding.

The scene reminded him of past Christmases spent traveling with his mother and father to their holiday estate in the south of France. He would walk through this same office, holding his mother’s hand as she hustled him through the throng. He shook off the memory and scanned the crowd.

_There you are._

He caught sight of a familiar shock of red and hastened across the room, trying to force the stiff apprehension out of his posture. After just over a year, it no longer felt strange to fall into step beside Charlie Weasley, but he could feel the eyes in the room turning in his direction, and he knew he was attracting the kind of attention that he had left the country to avoid.

Romania had been so much simpler. No one recognized him there. He had been angry, at first, to find himself apprenticed to Weasley, and Charlie hadn’t wanted an apprentice at all, much less one who was responsible for bullying and nearly killing several of his family members.

But after a tense few weeks of Draco shooting his mouth off and getting his ass kicked summarily, he learned not to cross lines with the man, and they settled into a sort of grudging routine. Charlie was blunt to the point of intrusiveness, saw immediately through secrecy and manipulation, and would shut down any and all slights against his family with excessive force. But he was calm by nature, seldom got angry, even when Draco goaded him, and he was a surprisingly patient and thorough teacher, though Draco would never have admitted it out loud. Several aspects of their partnership were still on rocky ground, but Draco had grown fond of the man in spite of himself.

Now, as they made their way out of the Ministry’s transportation annex, he could feel a change in Charlie’s normally easygoing demeanor, and the tension in the lines of the man’s body made Draco mirror his sense of anxiety. He fell in just behind Charlie, at his right side, positioning himself between the larger man and the stone wall of the corridor. The building was crowded, and only grew more so when they entered the main building and crossed the atrium.

Charlie was a large man, about six feet tall, not quite as tall as Ronald or his twin brothers, but thicker, broad-shouldered and heavily muscled. His curly red hair fell down to his shoulders, he wore faded olive-green cargo pants tucked into a battered pair of dragon-hide boots, and the edge of a shiny burn scar peered over the collar of his slate-gray, long-sleeve t-shirt. He had on a worn black leather jacket and the tooth of a Hungarian Horntail hung on a leather cord around his neck. He had a particular intensity about him that made him seem more unapproachable than he really was. That expression, heightened by his current anxiety, lent him a sort of dangerous appearance, and though Draco normally resented how he was as good as invisible when he appeared in public next to Charlie, he found himself grateful for it now, when the prying stares that were aimed at him wilted under Charlie’s gaze.

He was reminded of the feeling of walking beside his father as a child, knowing by the deferential, averted glances of the people around them that he was safe, protected by his father’s power. He allowed himself to press just the tiniest bit closer to Charlie’s side. They were almost through the atrium now. As they stood in the queue for the loo that would flush them back out into London, he caught the tail end of a hushed conversation, whispers of “Malfoy” and “Death Eater.” He stared at a spot on the wall, face placid, until he felt the brush of Charlie’s shoulder against his, and he warmed at the display of protectiveness, leaning back into the man just enough that their shoulders touched, but only just.

As they exited the ministry toilets and stepped out into the brisk street, he relaxed, but Charlie was still tense and more pensive than usual. They walked several blocks in silence before Charlie stopped, sat abruptly on the bench in front of a muggle bus stop, and surreptitiously cast a privacy charm from the sleeve of his shirt where his wand was stored. Draco sat beside him and waited, studiously ignoring the desire to pry.

He had been tight-lipped about their new assignment since he had received it, and Draco had given up trying to pry out the details after causing their first row in over six months. “So,” he said, looking at Draco with an expression he couldn’t quite place.

_Finally._

“So?” Draco replied.

“So…our new assignment is in London. The last raid on Ionescu’s cell closed the Romania assignment. Bellanova is still at large, along with a few low-ranking members, but for all intents and purposes, the cell has been routed and all targets eliminated.”

“Wait…eliminated? You...?” Draco sputtered.

“Yeah.”

“All of them? The rest of the cell? By yourself?!”

Draco could hear the frustration in his own voice. Charlie had ordered him to stay behind, promising it was a routine scouting mission and that two people would be more likely to draw attention.

“I had to, Draco.”

“No, you very well didn’t, Weasley. You can’t just…go gallivanting into the middle of a cell of dark mages by yourself with no backup. I didn’t even know how to find you. What if you’d been captured?”

He could feel himself getting worked up, but he made no effort to tone it down, trusting that the privacy charm would hold. Charlie was staring into the middle distance, at some point over Draco’s shoulder.

“Look, Draco, I…” He trailed off.

Draco waited.

“I had to do it myself, OK? I don’t expect you to understand.”

Draco tried to let the righteous indignation take the sting out of Charlie’s actions but he couldn’t quite manage it. Charlie didn’t trust him. He knew it. He hadn’t trusted him since the Inferi fuckup.

*************************************************************************************

They had been working together for four months, only just at a stage where they could be in the same room for more than a few minutes without ending up in a row. He had followed Charlie’s lessons up to that point only because his oath of apprenticeship forced him to do so. He hated the grueling, early-morning physical training and resented the shit out of having to learn magizoology to maintain his frankly ridiculous cover. He hated dragons. He hated the reserve. He hated taking orders from a Weasley and hated even more that he couldn’t deny the usefulness of the new spells he was set to master. He hated the patient, even cadence of Charlie Weasley’s explanations. He hated sharing a cramped flat with the man, hated drinking tea every morning out of mismatched mugs. He hated how calm the man was, and how when he finally did say something nasty enough to get a reaction out of him, Charlie easily hexed him into silence, or punched him.

When he joined the Unthinkables, it had seemed exciting and dangerous and a little romantic. He would be working for the deepest and most secret layer of the Department of Mysteries, solving cases so dangerous that the Aurors, and even the Unspeakables, weren’t allowed to learn of their existence. He would be elite, a class above Potter and his fan club, whose acceptance into the Auror force had been splashed across the papers for weeks. And the best part was that the program was so classified that only a handful of ministry officials even knew it existed. He would have the cover of complete anonymity, working under glamours or Polyjuice any time he made a public appearance.

He could disappear; he would finally be able to walk down the street in Diagon Alley, or go for a firewhiskey in Hogsmeade, without the stares or whispers. No shops would turn his money away, no one would spit at him as he walked past. He could remake himself, complete an apprenticeship under one of the most knowledgeable and powerful wizards in magical society, become stronger. Strong enough to defend himself. Strong enough that no one would ever be able to hold his family hostage again. He had been so ready. 

Until he was partnered with Charlie Weasley.

It was his first time out in the field, a routine scouting mission to assess the strength of Ionescu’s forces. Draco was familiar with the history of the cell, having studied Charlie’s meticulous case notes from the past eight years.

_Elena Ionescu, necromancer marked with Dark Mark during First War, accompanied by three apprentices. Seldom separated from second-in-command, Eduardo Bellanova. Use of deadly force authorized._

The photographs stuck in among the case notes had been nightmare fuel. Draco tried not to remember them.

Charlie and his previous partner had been tracking and slowly eliminating Ionescu’s forces since before the Second War even began. He wasn’t sure what had happened to Charlie’s partner; Charlie didn’t say, and he didn’t ask. But the case notes said that the cell had once been more than 50 strong, and only five of them remained, a fact which left Draco feeling intensely curious about the kind of person who could kill 45 dark wizards with only a Weasley for backup. The force had been very nearly routed. But the end of the Second War had displaced many of Voldemort’s supporters, and six former Death Eaters had joined their ranks, seeking shelter from the law.

The job was supposed to have been simple- a wands-away, low-risk mission to let Draco get his feet wet before they went in on a hit. They were meant to go in under disillusionment and observe the recruits and the layout of their current camp. But sheer shitty luck had sent the entire operation sideways minutes after they laid eyes on their targets, when two of the recruits broke out into a duel, and a dispelling charm went wide and hit both Charlie and Draco as they were crossing an open clearing.

They were exposed and defenseless, with no cover, and within seconds, all six recruits had taken up duelling positions and were firing hexes at Charlie’s hastily-erected shield charm. The only silver lining was that Ionescu and her apprentices seemed to be absent; Draco repressed a shudder at the idea of facing a necromancer in battle. He looks over at Charlie, who was hastily reinforcing a crack in his shield.

“Alright Draco, I need you to focus your magic into the shield, yeah? Nice and easy, like your casting a Protego, but you’re pushing it into mine, OK?”

His voice was calm, calmer and he had any right to be, instructing Draco as though they were not being attacked three to one by dark wizards, as though it were just another lesson, and it made Draco hate him more because he didn’t feel the same panic Draco felt. He pushed his magic into Charlie’s, and the cracks in the shield stabilized.

“Now hold that steady for a second,” he said. Draco felt dark magic battering their shield, beating against his magic.

“Look,” Charlie said, gesturing at a line of trees across the clearing from them. They had been caught out in the open, in the middle of the clearing, and their opponents had the advantage of cover. Four of their opponents had emerged into the open; two of the four were standing almost shoulder to shoulder, casting in a well-practiced tandem. One hovered near the tree line, throwing curses but unwilling to emerge fully into the open. The fourth had put up a shield similar to Charlie’s and was advancing toward them. The two remaining opponents had disappeared behind the tree line, and Draco could see the telltale sheen of defensive wards being cast.

“Our main threat is the pair there,” Charlie said, ignoring the advancing spellcaster. “Once our friend here gets within range, I’ll be able to bring down that shield like a sheet of parchment, but it will leave me completely vulnerable to those two,” he said, indicating the two casters. “When I say when, I’m going to drop the shield, and I need you to hit them with enough force to keep them both occupied while I take this guy down. I’ll only need about 15 seconds, tops.”

The man had pushed the shield out, like a battering ram, and was only about 100 feet from them.

“Once he’s out of the way, you’re going to throw the shield back up, and I’m going to do some loud and flashy stuff to distract the pair long enough to make a run for it. The other three are unlikely to follow us. It looks like the two in the woods are defensive casters, and the gentleman at the tree line just there doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with his own magic.”

This was accurate, as the boy in question had taken into hiding behind a tree and popping out at random intervals to fire off spells, powerful but directionless.

“If we can make it across the river, we can get to the portkey back in the valley. I know a few good defensive tricks using elemental water magic that will keep anyone who does come after us off our backs. I know this looks bad, but I’ve been in a lot of firefights with worse odds. Just trust me.”

But he did not trust Charlie. As a matter of fact, he was certain they were going to die. Even with the full force of his magic behind their shield, he could see the cracks forming already. He was sweating with the strain of keeping up the spell. The man was now about 50 feet away, and he looked alight with a manic sort of glee that Draco remembered all too well.

************************************************************************************************************************

_Her._

He could still feel the feverish heat of her skin as she wrapped her hand around his and raised it.

_“You have to mean it, Draco. You have to want it.”_

_She aimed his wand at the stringy-blond head of the girl curled into a ball on the floor in front of him. As she took her hand away, Luna Lovegood rolled over and looked up at him, silent and unblinking._

_“She is vermin, Draco, a filthy traitor. She has disgraced her blood.”_

_She dropped down to her hands and knees and crawled across the floor to the girl, stretching her pale fingers out and stroking Lovegood’s dirty cheek._

_“All the trouble you and your daddy caused…you’re just begging to be punished, aren’t you?” she crooned. “Aren’t you?”_

_He steadied his wand._

_Lovegood reached up, pulled Bellatrix’s hand away, and held it in her own, and he almost missed Bella’s eyes widen, nearly imperceptibly._

_“Go ahead Draco. It’s OK. I’m ready,” Lovegood said, turning to him._

_Bella threw back her head shrieked with laughter._

_“Did you hear that Draco? She’s ready. Go ahead, Draco. Punish her.”_

_She leaned in closer, almost cheek-to-cheek with Lovegood, and ran her fingers through the girl’s hair._

_“Punish her,” she crooned. “What are you waiting for Draco? PUNISH HER!”_

_He stared at their interlocked hands, at Lovegood’s thumb rubbing over the back of Bella’s, and felt the incantation die behind his teeth._

_“No?” she asked him, girlishly, and leapt to her feet, whipping out her wand and spinning to face him, her face alight with manic glee._

_“It’s OK, sweetie. It can be hard the first time.”_

_She twirled her wand between her fingers._

_“Your mother has let you grow up soft,” she snarled. “But you’ll learn. You’ll learn to want it.”_

_She turned her wand on Lovegood._

_“CRUCIO,” Bella shrieked, gleeful._

_He looked away as Lovegood screamed on the floor._

************************************************************************************************************************

As he stared at the approaching Death Eater, he was suddenly struck by the magnitude of his own stupidity. He was going to die. Nope…actually, he was going to be tortured, die slowly, then be turned into an undead minion, his corpse doomed to roam the mortal plane.

The man was grinning at them. He was so close Draco could see his blackened teeth. He could feel his magic cracking, giving way. He stumbled backward, biting back a sob. He let his shield drop, turned, and ran, and he didn’t look back at the sound of Weasley’s magic shattering under the force of the opposing spells, or the sound of Weasley yelling after him, “Draco? Draco, DAMN IT, DRACO!”

He felt the zinging of curses flying past him, but he kept running. He heard a rumbling, an explosion, a clanging sound that sounded like the strike of metal against metal, but he kept running. The river was in sight.

The water was cold as he waded into it. He made it halfway across. The water was up to his hips. He heard the crackle of dark magic rip through the air and the sound of an inhuman screaming, and he was struck by a sudden fear that it was Charlie screaming like that, that Charlie was making that sound, and it was then that he was hit with the weight of what he had done.

_You used him as a distraction. So you could run away. You’re going to get him killed. You might have already gotten him killed._

Draco felt a surge of something rise in his chest, something powerful and irrational, and suddenly, he found himself turning around and struggling against the current, back toward the riverbank.

“Hang on Weasley,” he muttered. “I’m coming. You better not be dead yet.”

Finally, he broke free from the river and crawled up on the bank, struggling to his feet, and was promptly grabbed around the ankle and dragged back into the river. He thrashed for a moment in blind panic, reaching for his wand. Something that felt like a hand was clutching his calf, dragging him below the surface into the murky turbulence of the river. “Grindylows,” he thought, desperately trying to recall his third year Defense lessons. He aimed in the direction of whatever was holding onto him and sent a jet of boiling water at it, then kicked out, hard, and felt his foot connect. 

He swam desperately toward the shore, sending more jets of boiling water over his shoulder at random, until he scrambled back onto the bank and away from the water. As he hastened away, he risked a glance over his shoulder, and to his horror, he saw a hand break through the surface of the water. A human hand, followed by a human face, with its skin hanging in shreds from its face, eye sockets empty, tongue lolling from its mouth.

As it emerged in pursuit of him, he was struck by the fact but it was still wearing clothing, a Hawaiian print shirt and cargo shorts. It had been a man, a muggle by the look of it. A middle-aged man, portly, with a bald spot right on top of the middle of its head.

The water was roiling with the emerging bodies.

“Oh, God...”

Inferi. He had never seen one in person. He took a few steps back, slowly, until the sound of screaming dragged him back to reality. Charlie. He took off at a sprint back toward the clearing, hoping against all odds that he hadn’t gotten the man killed.

As he approached, he could smell the scene of the battle before he could see it. Burning flesh permeated the air. He sprinted towards a fallen form, lying prone in the middle of the clearing, and sagged in relief when he saw that it was the man who had attacked them. There was a flash of red light and a crash coming from the woods, and Draco hastened toward the sound, stepping over the alarmingly mangled bodies of the two spell casters, who appeared, now that he was close enough to see them properly, to be twin sisters. He proceeded into the woods, jogging past another corpse, this one riddled with a dozen, sickle-sized, bloody holes.

He kept running. He heard the sound of yelling, and another crash. When he finally caught sight of Charlie, he found the man covered from head to foot in blood, firing reductor curses at a small horde of Inferi.

“Fuck you, you rotting son of a bitch,” Charlie screamed, blasting the head off an Inferius that got too close. “I’m gonna kill you again, motherfucker.”

Charlie was a vicious blur, robes ripped, smeared with blood, magic crackling wildly through the air, and Draco knew that he had been wrong about him. The man in front of him was powerful, dangerous. Draco understood this now. How had he ever missed it? Spells flew from Charlie’s wand in arcs; he was no longer even chanting incantations, his intent ripping through the air as the shambling bodies fell around him.

The Inferi had surrounded Charlie, clawing at him, digging their teeth into the bare flesh of his arms. Charlie’s wand was knocked from his hand. He saw the man’s lips curl into a snarl, saw his hands clench into fists, and the Inferi surrounding him burst into flames. Wandless magic, Draco realized in awe.

He heard the shrieking again; it seemed that they felt pain even in their death. Draco raised his wand and blasted a fireball at a corpse as it lunged for Charlie, and the man turned his head, seeing Draco for the first time.

“You came back,” he said.

Draco was still dumbstruck. Charlie Weasley could create fire with his mind.

“You can do wandless magic,” he blurted stupidly.

Charlie barked a humorless laugh as he snatched up his wand and tossed three more blasting charms in quick succession.

“I can do a lot of things, Malfoy,” he said. “Do that fireball again. Let’s see if we can’t get these fuckers to back off a bit.”

Draco complied, flinging balls of flame from the tip of his wand to drive the encroaching Inferi back.

“There are more in the river,” Draco said, lighting up what once had been a particularly large woman and pushing away his horror as the corpse let out a shriek. “I think they followed me here. We have to get out of these woods or we’ll be surrounded.”

“Oh, it’s WE have to get out now, is it?” Charlie snapped. “It’s us getting out together after all?”

Draco pushed aside a wave of shame and focused on his spells, sending another jet of fire into the middle of a cluster of Inferi that were edging too close for comfort.

“Well, I guess it’s a good job I managed to rip a hole in the anti-apparition wards _by myself _while I was busy killing everyone who wasn’t already dead, _BY MYSELF,_ _while they were all trying to kill me_. Grab my arm; we’re going to apparate straight to the portkey, and we’re going _home_ , and I’m going to burn these clothes and scour myself with bleach. And then, I’m going to get exceedingly drunk and sleep for the next three days.”__

____

_He broke down their wards?_

____

“Why didn’t you apparate as soon as the wards fell?” Draco asked incredulously.

____

“Oh, I don’t know… Maybe because I couldn’t leave my idiot apprentice alone to die in the middle of a firefight,” Charlie snapped.

____

He glared at Draco as he grabbed his arm and apparated them.

__************************************************************************************************************************************************************************_ _

After the Inferi incident, Charlie was distant, answering him in monosyllables. Draco took up apologizing as though it were a job.

____

He apologized every morning, waking before Charlie and making a pot of bergamot tea by hand, the way he had seen Charlie do it. He apologized the whole way through morning PT, until he was too out of breath to huff out the words. He apologized while shoveling dragon dung, and while descaling the rotting hide of a Chinese Fireball, and while trimming the claws of a litter of baby Ukrainian Ironbellies. He walked into the village at the foot of the Reserve land and mailed an apology by owl post right back to the flat they shared. He apologized so often that the rest of the Reserve staff had started a betting pool over what exactly it was that Draco had done wrong.

____

He became an apologizing professional. He could have written books about apologizing. It wasn’t the first time he had ever felt ashamed of his actions. But it was the first time he had ever cared whether he was forgiven, so he refused to let it go. He would apologize until Charlie's sullen silence was crushed into submission by the strength of his apologizing. The knowledge that Charlie Weasley could have apparated to safety but stayed behind, for him, weighed on Draco’s mind.

____

He regretted running. He had joined the Unspeakables so he could become powerful enough to protect himself and his family…but what about protecting his friends?

____

He wasn’t like Potter or his ilk, the kind of person who would dive in front of a curse or run back into flames to save someone. He wanted to be safe. He wanted to live.

____

But something in the back of his mind niggled at him.

____

*************************************************************************************

____

_“Like it hot, scum?” roared Crabbe as he ran. He saw that the path to the door was clear; Crabbe was running towards it, but his heavy frame was too slow. Draco launched into a sprint. Flames of abnormal size were pursuing him, licking up the sides of the junk bulwarks, which were crumbling to soot at their touch. He was going to make it. But… He caught sight of the prone form of Gregory Goyle, stunned, laying helplessly in the path of the flames. And he stopped. Vince looked over his shoulder at Draco as though Draco were mad. Before he could talk himself out of it, he grabbed Greg’s bulky frame and began to run again, stumbling under the weight of his unconscious friend._

____

_His friend._

____

_Something unfamiliar rose up in him, and even though he could feel his lungs burning and his muscles screaming in protest, he put on a burst of speed, and caught up to Vince just in time to see him stumble and fall sideways into the flames. He dropped Greg and lunged, but he was too late. Vince was swallowed up. He looked up again. The path to the door was still clear, but he would never make it carrying Greg._

____

_The blaze was closer, close enough that he could see the teeth and claws of the bestial shapes the flames had assumed. Greg, his friend, who snuck off to read muggle comic books and always had a stash of sweets that he would share with Draco in the early morning hours of the nights he couldn’t sleep, who was so happy he cried real tears when he made it onto the Slytherin quidditch team, was 10 seconds from being burned to death._

____

_And that something rose up again, and before he knew what he was doing, he was running back toward the flames, grabbing onto Greg and dragging him up onto a pile of desks and out of the direct path of the blaze, believing until the very moment that he saw Potter’s hand descending through the smoke that he had sealed his own fate._

____

*************************************************************************************

____

He had been the kind of person who ran back into a fire that night. And there had been something in him, something strong, that had kept him moving. He wanted that, whatever it was.

____

Charlie had it. Draco could see it in him during the fight, the driving force behind his spells. He wanted to know what it was, but Charlie was barely speaking to him. 

____

And so, Draco groveled.

____

And on his third week of apologizing, Charlie finally looked up from his cup of tea and looked Draco in the eye.

____

“Why did you do it?” he asked, startling Draco, who hadn’t been expecting a response.

____

Why had he run? He had seen the look on that Death Eater’s face, and remembered _her_ and just lost his head. He hadn’t meant to. It was like one moment he was in the middle of the fight, and the next he was waist-deep into the river.

____

“I don’t know…it’s not like I _meant_ to leave you like that; I just…I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry. It was wrong of me! Reprehensible! Unbefitting! I dishonored the Malfoy name, and I put your life at risk, and I swear, I-”

____

“No, Malfoy,” Charlie said, cutting him off mid-apology. “I mean why did you take this job? Why join the Unthinkables? Did you not read the job description?”

____

Draco paused, unsure how to express himself.

____

“I wanted… A lot of things. I wanted the chance to take down the last of the Death Eaters before they could come after me or my mother. I wanted the anonymity. I wanted to be able to disappear. I wanted to be…better,” he finished lamely.

____

“Better?” Charlie asked.

____

“Yes…better. At magic. I couldn’t…protect my family, before. I saw my friend die, and I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t even protect myself. During the war, I… You have to understand, Weasley. I never wanted anyone to get hurt because of my actions. Did you know that the Dark Lord wasn’t even a pureblood? When I found out that the Dark Lord had a muggle for a father, I realized that everything I believed was wrong. And I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but I followed through with things that were…evil, that led to innocent people’s deaths, because he would have killed my mother and father to punish me if I refused.”

____

He paused to meet Charlie’s eyes. The man was watching him calmly, his face blank. The intensity of the gaze made Draco nervous. He knew he was babbling, but now that he had started, he couldn’t stop.

____

“You see, he didn’t…value people. He didn’t really need his followers. He just liked having them to control. Any sign of resistance and he killed them. I hated myself the whole time I was fixing that cabinet. I didn’t want to kill Dumbledore. In the end, I couldn’t. I hated myself for taking the Mark.”

____

He paused again. He knew that he should say that he regretted his actions, that remorse was expected of him, but he found himself unable to lie.

____

“But I’m not sorry.”

____

Charlie raised an eyebrow but remained silent. Draco took it as a sign to go on.

____

“I’m not sorry because the alternative was watching my mother be violated, tortured, and killed, and if I had to do all of it again to stop that from happening to her, I would. I’m not sorry, even though I am.”

____

He could feel blood rushing to his face. He had never discussed his actions during the war with anyone outside the ministry Aurors who interrogated him at his trial. But suddenly, he was desperate for Charlie to understand.

____

“I knew this job would be dangerous in an abstract way, but I thought… If I joined the Unthinkables, I could learn to protect myself. And my family. If some psychopath ever threatened them again, I could stand on even ground and fight for them, instead of hiding behind people stronger than me and getting them killed.”

____

Charlie was watching him, scrutinizing. Draco resisted the urge to fidget. Finally, he broke his silence.

____

“So you became an Unthinkable to develop your magical skill so that if another Voldemort were to show up at your mum’s house, you could duel him and win?” Charlie asked incredulously.

____

“Well…,” Draco shifted, staring down at his teacup and feeling slightly ridiculous. “Yes, essentially.”

____

“Good,” Charlie said, cracking the first real smile he had ever seen from him. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”

____

Draco’s head snapped up, and he stared at Charlie, open-mouthed.

____

“Draco…do you want to continue this apprenticeship? If you resign, no one will even be able to think any less of you. The Chief will obliviate you, me, and himself. No one would ever know you’d quit. You wouldn’t even know you’d quit.”

____

Of course, Charlie would want him to quit. He’d almost gotten him killed. Charlie didn’t want to have to train a partner that couldn’t even be trusted to keep his head in a firefight. Draco stared at a water ring on the top of the oak table and tried to stop his eyes from welling up.

____

_Ugh. No. You are not going to start crying in front of a Weasley. You are a Malfoy. You will pull yourself together._

____

“You don't have to do this, you know? You obviously have impressive magical skill to even make it through the selection process. You could probably do just about anything else…join the Aurors, or work on the Unspeakable team. Or, hell…your family has more money than they could ever possibly need, wouldn’t you be happier laying on a beach somewhere?”

____

Charlie was eyeing him critically.

____

“Or…maybe not with that complexion. You’re basically white as paste. Maybe not a beach. What about a nice, misty mountain cabin? You could take up painting. Or work on experimental potions. You’re good at potions, right?”

____

He glared up at Charlie.

____

“I do not want to lie about on a beach or anywhere else,” he snapped. “I owe it to all the people who were hurt or killed because of me to follow through with this. I didn’t fight the Dark Arts then because I couldn’t. But I can now. I have to do this, Weasley.”

____

Charlie sighed loudly, drained the rest of his tea, and plunked his cup down onto the table in front of him.

____

“Fine,” Charlie said. “But I’m going to be real with you. You’re spoiled, arrogant, and mean. And up until now, I would bet galleons you’ve never apologized for anything in your life. If you want to keep this apprenticeship, you’re going to have to try something new.”

____

Draco paused, biting back an angry retort. Weasley was…not being unfair.

____

“I want to stay,” he said quietly. “I will do whatever you ask of me to secure that position.”

____

He remembered Charlie’s calm resolve, the crackle of his magic, the ground shaking beneath its power. He wanted that power. He wanted the power to take on a horde of Inferi to protect a friend. He had never wanted it before, but he wanted it now.

____

“Then apologize. That’s my one condition.”

____

“That’s what I’ve been doing,” Draco cried angrily. “For three weeks! I mailed you an apology by owl!”

____

“Not to me,” Charlie replied. “To everyone else.”

____

“What?” Draco asked. “Everyone else?”

____

“Yes. Everyone you have been unkind to or hurt in any way, intentionally or otherwise. Give me your word that you will accept this task, under the binding of your oath of apprenticeship, or walk away now.”

____

Draco stared at the man. Weasley expected him to go about debasing himself by…hunting down every person he had ever had words with and telling them he’s sorry? He regarded the man, waiting for some sort of punch line, but Weasley appeared to be entirely serious. And he could see no way out of it. Weasley had invoked the oath of apprenticeship.

____

“Very well,” he said finally. “I accept this task under the binding of my oath of apprenticeship. And I will start with you. I’ve said it already, but I’ll say it again: I’m sorry I put you at risk. I should have listened to you. I’m sorry. The next time we’re in the field, I won’t lose my head.”

____

“That’s well and good,” Charlie said, “but we’re not going out into the field again anytime soon.”

____

“What? Why?,” Draco demanded. “I apologized. I told you I won’t let it happen again!”

____

“Look Draco,” Charlie began. “Maybe you do regret your actions during that fight, but just regretting it doesn’t change the fact that what you did hurt me. I didn’t get injured, but it still hurt. I trusted you, and you left me when I needed you. You don't leave your friends when they need you.”

____

Hurt. He had hurt Charlie. Somehow hearing that that was worse than being shouted at or physically punished.

____

“We can work on spellwork, physical training, magical theory…we’ve got plenty to be getting on with. But I’m not ready to take you back out into the field with me yet.”

____

And, true to his word, Charlie had not allowed Draco to accompany him since, despite Draco’s wheedling.

____

*************************************************************************************

____

He had accepted his banishment from field missions with bad grace, and only under the condition that Charlie provide locations, timelines, and a plan of action so that Draco would know where to find him if he didn't come home.

___"You complete arsehole. You actually went on a hit mission and didn't tell me. You could have died. I wouldn't even have known where to find your body." ____ _

“I had to do it myself, OK? I don’t expect you to understand,” Charlie said.

______ _ _

He knew it was his own fault that Charlie didn’t trust him, but it still stung.

______ _ _

“Why even keep training me?” he demanded, knowing he sounded petulant, but too hurt to care.

______ _ _

“Draco, listen-“

______ _ _

“What am I going to have to do to earn your trust back? You were a Gryffindor, right? What do Gryffindors do to prove themselves to each other? Wrestle trolls? Juggle flaming torches? Do you want me to go back to the reserve and go duel a dragon? Tell me and I’ll do it!” he cried, waving his hands dramatically.

______ _ _

“What do you think went on in Gryffindor tower?” Charlie asked, his mouth turning up at the corners.

______ _ _

“Judging from the events surrounding your brothers and their friends, troll wrestling was probably a relaxing Sunday afternoon sort of activity,” he replied, smiling back.

______ _ _

Charlie sighed. “Listen, Draco. I had to kill her. The new assignment came, and we only had two weeks left on that job, and I couldn’t leave without finishing it. Remember when you said you became an Unthinkable so you could protect your family, even if you had to kill Voldemort himself?” he asked. “She killed my best friend in front of me. I had to run with her cooling fucking corpse in my arms. Ionescu had to die. I had to kill her.”

____Oh. That's what happened to Charlie's partner, then._ _ _ _

A hardness came over his face that Draco had never seen, even in the middle of a fight. As they sat on the bench in silence, Draco realized how little he really knew about Charlie Weasley.

______ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	10. Severus Snape and the Personal Conversation, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was rather long, and almost entirely dialogue, so I broke it into two parts. Remus has a heart-to-heart with Ginny, and naturally, Severus eavesdrops.

When Severus opened his eyes, he was briefly confused. The softness of the mattress beneath him, the plush warmth of the feather-down comforter, the dark oak wood of the bed, and its velvet hangings were a far cry from his springy mattress at Spinner’s End, and for a disorienting moment, he thought himself to be back in his four-poster at Hogwarts. There was a dull ache in his chest, and he felt heavy. He tried to move, and his body resisted. As he peered around the room in the grey light, the previous night trickled back to him. Ginny Weasley in the diner, gathering mushrooms, the Death Eaters. Sirius Black healing him. He remembered Black’s hands probing his bare skin, and he wanted to gag. And Lovegood, pulling him along by the hand like he was some sort of invalid child. Lovegood fluffing his pillows and kissing him goodnight.

Black had seen him bare and weakened. He wanted to wrap his fingers around the man’s throat and squeeze it until it collapsed under his hands. He wanted to…

He shook his head. That had to stop. He took a deep breath, pushing the anger and humiliation away, building a high wall around it in his mind.

He was not the same scrawny, pasty child he had been, and Black had not exposed him for sport. He knew St. Mungo’s was unlikely to treat him. If Mungo’s would turn away Remus Lupin, a decorated hero and two-war veteran because of his lycanthropy, a condition outside his control, how likely were they to treat him, who had chosen his affliction? Black had…made an appropriate decision. As far as the Lovegood girl…he would chalk her behavior up to general strangeness. But when had she taken up a Healer’s apprenticeship? And if she was studying under Black, that would mean he had attained his Mastery…that didn’t seem possible. He had served the Order as a medic during the war. Severus had assumed he must have started some sort of training before he was imprisoned. But even if he had started an apprenticeship straight out of Hogwarts, he would have only completed three years before he was put into Azkaban. A Healer’s Mastery usually took ten years to complete. Something didn’t add up. Could he have finished a complete Mastery in the four years since the end of the war?

Severus heaved himself out of bed with considerable difficulty and located the spare set of muggle clothes that Weasley had set out for him the night before. He stepped into the washroom and ran the tap into an excessively large, claw-footed bathtub. As he sank into its steaming depths, he pondered his predicament.

A glance at his wristwatch showed that he had slept all of yesterday and completely through the night, and it was now around 4 AM the next morning. He could flee silently, while the rest of the household was still asleep, but curiosity stayed him. He still needed to determine the source of Weasley’s information; the fact that she had known about the Death Eater camp was unsettling, and he was now firmly convinced that it had something to do with Black and Lupin as well. He had a ready-made alibi for hanging around; Lovegood had instructed him to remain under their care for the next few days. He could milk the injury to buy himself time to figure out what was going on. He was loath to spend any more time here than strictly necessary, but he needed that information. If that meant weathering the combined strangeness of Black-the-competent-professional and his bizarrely affectionate apprentice, so be it.

He submerged his dirty hair, then scrubbed it, then scrubbed his skin twice for good measure. By the time he was washed, dried, and dressed, he felt considerably more human. He ambled slowly back into the borrowed room, which appeared to be occupied, judging by the effects. He lit the tip of his wand and peered around. Whoever lived in this room was muggleborn; there were several posters of the West Ham football team tacked onto the wall beside a Harpies poster and a smaller closeup of Ginny Weasley, tossing up a snitch and catching it with a grin. A pair of battered trainers lay by a chest at the foot of the bed. There was an old school trunk shoved into a corner. On the nightstand lay a stack of muggle comics, and he couldn’t resist thumbing through them.

_Daredevil, Amazing Spider-man, a Spiderman-Deadpool team-up issue. More Daredevil. Hmmm…must be partial to the Marvel franchise. Nope…there’s a whole pile of Teen Titans. And the Outsiders._

Alone in the dark, he smiled to himself. His father had liked comics; the old man would stop at the five-and-dime on paydays and pick up three forties and a pack of Lucky Strikes for himself and a stack of pulps for them to share. Severus used to crawl up onto the dingy arm of the man’s recliner and read beside him. The old man would laugh out loud at the funnies, and Severus liked the sound, at least until he started to laugh a little too loud, for too long. Then Severus knew it was time to go to his room and shut the door until morning.

On top of the dresser were a number of photographs, both magical and muggle, and the mystery of the room’s occupant was solved. He picked up a photo of a very young, wide-eyed Dean Thomas, who was holding a newborn baby wearing a pink knit cap. The little boy’s expression was a comical mixture of awe and alarm. In the corner of the photo, he could see a tortoiseshell cat stretching in a windowsill.

He picked up all the photos in turn: Thomas wrestling a red-cheeked Seamus Finnegan to the ground in front of Hagrid’s hut, a large family gathered around a laden dinner table, Thomas and Lovegood, who was tugging him by the hand toward a carousel at a muggle park. Thomas, Finnegan, Lovegood and Longbottom in front of the Black Lake. Thomas and Ginny Weasley pulling weeds in a garden. A photo of a rather pretty woman who he supposed was Thomas’ mother. He had always loved photos, even of strangers.

He set the photos down, and resisted the urge to plunder through the dresser drawers. You could learn a lot about a person by what they kept close to them, and being curious as a child, he had been prone to snooping through drawers and desks and closets. It was a habit that had earned him a beating on more than one occasion.

The sun had not quite made it into the morning sky, but now that he was clean and dressed, he found himself restless and hungry. He wondered if Black’s elf was up. Horrid little thing though it was, the elf had seemed to tolerate him better than some of the other Order members who had occupied Grimmauld Place during the war. He knew the general layout of the estate, or at least what part of it had been inhabitable then. He opened the door gently, wincing at the creaking hinges, and made his way down the staircase.

_Is it rude to wake up someone else’s elf to cook you breakfast?_

He could easily fix his own breakfast, but that seemed worse somehow. He had seen Molly Weasley use the kitchen, and Shacklebolt, and McGonagall once. Even Mundungus Fletcher would turn up to fix himself a sandwich now and then. But they had all belonged, somehow. He was an outsider, both in the Order and in Black’s space. He wondered if there was some unspoken etiquette about how familiar one must be to another in order to cook in their kitchen. Perhaps this was a privilege afforded only to friends. He didn’t have a lot of experience to draw on. The only friends he had ever had were Lily, Regulus, and Narcissa. And, Lucius, he supposed, though he really only tolerated Lucius out of necessity. He would never have dreamed of asking Lucius to cook in his kitchen. And when he stayed over with Lily, she had always cooked for him, or her mother had.

Grimmauld Place had been a combination of headquarters and makeshift infirmary during the war, and Order members had appeared at all hours, bursting through the Floo, bleeding through the front door, appearing by Portkey and appartition, and even by hippogriff. He wondered whether they had all just helped themselves to the kitchen the same way they appeared, uninvited.

He wasn’t quite sure how to be a guest in someone else’s home. He had never quite been able to grasp the subtle things about people, like the unspoken boundary between tolerated acquaintance and welcomed friend. Like when one was considered welcome to pay unscheduled visits, or whether it was imprudent to borrow a coat without asking, or whether it would be acceptable to crash through another man’s pantry, bleed half to death on his kitchen floor, then wake up at 4 AM and cook himself breakfast.

He could catch someone lying, spin a story that was just detailed enough to be believable but vague enough to remember; he could read body language and ferret out concealed intentions. He understood how to wield flattery and humiliation like weapons.

But he had never quite figured out how to be close to someone; every attempt at friendship seemed to require revealing too much of himself. It felt unsafe, and left him wrong-footed, with the creeping feeling that he needed to apologize, that he should go away before he did something wrong.

His thoughts turned themselves over in his mind as he crept past the curtained portrait of the late Lady Black, through the foyer, and down the dark hallway into the kitchen. But as he approached the kitchen doorway, he stopped. Lupin and Weasley were already there, deep in muttered conversation.

“…don’t know what he was doing there, but he seemed honestly surprised to see me. Like, he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him,” said Weasley. “His alibi was clear bullshit though. Said he was looking for a sample of mushrooms for his potions research.”

“That…may not actually be a lie. He had a publication in Potions Quarterly a couple of months ago about psilocybin mushrooms and their magical properties. Bit over my head, but Sirius and Luna both said there was a definite potential for medical application,” Lupin replied.

“Yes, but he could have found mushrooms any place there are cows. You’re _not_ trying to tell me that him being there was a coincidence, Remus. I’m not having it,” said Weasley.

“I don’t think it was a coincidence. But I also don’t think he’s a Death Eater."

“Fine. But he knows something. He was at that farmhouse, and now he shows up where Ron and Harry went missing. Where is he getting information?” she asked.

_Wait…the farmhouse? How did they know about…_

“We don’t know for sure he was at the farmhouse. He brewed for the Death Eaters while he was undercover. Yaxley could easily have had some Veritaserum leftover from the war. Or maybe Snape was at the farmhouse. Maybe Death Eaters have some way of locating each other. Or hell, Gin, maybe he found him the same way I did,” said Lupin.

“You think Snape knows how to track?” Weasley asked.

“I don’t know, do I? I’m hardly an expert on Snape,” said Lupin.

“Then how are you so sure he’s not part of this whole…whatever it is? This Death Eater reunion thing?” asked Weasley.

“I trust him, Ginny,” Lupin replied.

“OK, ok. I believe you. He saved my ass back in that meadow. It doesn’t make sense for him to be a Death Eater. I just…you didn’t used to trust him. What changed?” she asked.

“Look, I don’t know how much you know about this, but…my friends and I did not get on with Snape when we were children. We could be quite cruel to him. Although he brought quite a bit of it on himself,” said Lupin.

“Harry said you bullied him,” Weasley stated impassively.

“Harry isn’t wrong. I’m not proud of it, and I regret that I didn’t put a stop to it,” Lupin replied.

“Why didn’t you?” said Ginny.

“I was…very naïve as a child. I was so happy to have friends who loved me, in spite of my condition, that I admit I followed them blindly at times. I was afraid of losing them,” Lupin said.

“I didn’t stand up for Luna,” Weasley replied blandly.

“What?” Lupin asked.

“When I first met her. People called her names and stole her stuff…I used to call her Loony Lovegood. I picked on her too. Now she’s my best friend,” said Weasley.

“I...didn’t know that. But I’m sure she’s forgiven you, Gin,” Lupin said.

“I know she has. I still regret it though, you know,” she said.

“I do know,” he replied.

They were silent for a minute. The conversation had become personal. It made Severus uncomfortable.

“Hey Remus?”

“Yeah, Ginny?”

“What started it? With you and Snape?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really. But I’m curious, and if you don’t tell me, I’ll go ask Snape, and he’ll probably hex me, and I’ll die. You don’t want me to die, do you?”

Lupin laughed. “You aren’t very persuasive, you know.”

“I just want to know why you guys hate each other so much. Like, what did he do to you?”

“It wasn’t what he did to me. It had more to do with Sirius. And Peter.”

“Pettigrew? The one that was Scabbers?”

“Yes, Peter Pettigrew. He was our friend during school, you know. Sirius, James, Peter and I…we were very close. Peter was…not stupid, but not the brightest. In a duel, he was just a bit too slow when he pulled his wand. Sometimes he could pull off truly impressive magic, but sometimes his spells would backfire or explode. Realistically, he was an average student, maybe even a bit above average. But compared to Sirius, who had been learning magic at his mother’s knee since he was old enough to hold a wand, and James, who picked everything up after seeing it once, Peter was…not quite as smart, not quite as talented, or bold, or clever. It gave him a bit of a complex, I’m afraid. And Snape... it was like he smelled weakness from a hundred yards away. James and Sirius were quite cruel to Snape, but he couldn’t fight both of them at once, and they were always together. So he took out his anger toward James and Sirius on Peter,” Lupin said.

“What did he do?” Weasley asked.

“Corner Peter alone and hex him, usually. He used to hit him in the back with a sticking charm so his clothes stuck to him. I can’t tell you how many layers of skin he lost when Pads and Prongs and I had to help him peel his underwear off his arse.”

Weasley snickered.

“Yes, well. It was funny at first,” Lupin said. “But the spells kept getting darker and darker. By the end of first year, it wasn’t just sticking charms and jelly-legs jinxes. He was coming back to the common room bleeding. Once we had to grow back all his teeth. He was afraid to go to the hospital wing, or to tell McGonagall. He was convinced that Snape would kill him if he spilled. By the end of second year, we stopped letting Pete walk anywhere alone, even from one class to the next.”

“For how long?” Weasley asked.

“Until we graduated. We went everywhere in a group of four. Granted, Snape couldn’t walk anywhere alone either. Especially not after James got a hold of his invisibility cloak,” Lupin said.

“Wasn’t that a bit…extreme?” Weasley asked.

“At the time? Not really. You have to understand, Gin. Things were different during the first war. What you experienced as a rivalry between houses was an open hostility for us. Students seldom walked alone in those days. Voldemort was recruiting openly at Hogwarts then, and his recruits thought nothing of hexing muggleborns, or anyone they perceived to be blood-traitors. And the muggleborns and blood-traitors gave it back in kind. Mostly everyone banded together. We had to.”

“Why did James and Sirius pick on him?” Weasley asked.

“James hated Snape because he was jealous. Snape and Lily were best friends, and Lily thought James was an arrogant toerag. Sirius hated Snape because of Regulus.”

“Regulus? Sirius’ brother?”

“Yes. Snape was quite close with Regulus. Sirius was convinced that Snape coerced Regulus into siding with Voldemort, and he rather hated him for it.”

“But I thought…I thought Sirius didn’t get on with his brother. Didn’t Regulus get Sirius kicked out? And that’s why he went to live with Harry’s dad’s family?”

“That’s…not exactly it. And it isn’t my story to tell. If you want to know what happened between Sirius and his family, you’ll have to ask him. But I will tell you that Sirius adored his brother. It destroyed a part of him…when Regulus took the Mark.”

At this, Severus was sure Lupin was mad. Sirius Black would not have spit on his brother if he were on fire. The Black brothers hated each other.

“Do you still hate Snape?” Weasley asked.

“Me? No. I never hated Snape, though I was often angry at him for hurting my friends. I’m very grateful for him. He saved Sirius’ life.”

_Ugh._

The thought of Lupin’s gratitude set his teeth on edge. He had only spared Black’s life on Dumbledore’s orders. After his escape from Azkaban, Black had been sick, gaunt, a shell of a human. He was borderline psychotic, jumping at shadows, pacing the halls of Grimmauld Place like an animal. He fought sleep, and when he did sleep, he woke up screaming. He snuck out in dog form and turned up half-drunk, covered in scrapes and bruises. He was a liability to the Order, and if it had been up to Severus, he would have let the man die at Bella’s wand.

But he was bloody Potter’s godfather, and Dumbledore had feared that losing the closest thing he had to a parent would have damaged the boy.

_And we couldn’t have that. Not Precious Potter. Not your Golden Boy, who you raised like a calf fattened for the slaughter._

So when that idiot Black had gone haring off to the Ministry and launched himself into the fray despite his pitiful state, Severus had been there, disillusioned, risking his cover to pull Black back just before his stunned body could fall through the Veil.

And he had let Black know it after all was said and done, had taken great pleasure in informing the man just how close he had come to throwing away not only his own life but his precious godson’s broken little heart as well.

“What about Sirius?” Weasley asked. “Does Sirius still hate Snape?”

“No,” Lupin replied. “He’s not…very good at expressing it, but he’s grateful to Snape. Sirius almost died at the Ministry, you know. And he realized what it would have done to Harry if he had died.”

“Harry would have blamed himself,” Ginny said.

“Yes. And Sirius knew that. He knew he had to get his shit together, so to speak. And he did. He threw all his energy into healing, brewing, working with Molly and Arthur on warding and evacuation plans…anything he could find to keep himself occupied, he threw himself at it.”

Lupin was quiet for a long minute. Weasley broke the silence.

“Do you think Snape hates you guys?”

“I’m not sure. I couldn’t say whether he hates us, but I do know that he’s unlikely to ever overlook my condition.”

“You think Snape hates you because you’re a werewolf?”

“I know Snape hates me because I’m a werewolf. And before you jump to my defense, Ginny, you should realize that it’s hardly unjustified. I almost killed him.”

“What? Like…you tried to…bite him?”

“It’s a long story.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank everyone who has left kudos, bookmarked, or subscribed. It's nice to know people are reading this. Thanks guys :)
> 
> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	11. Severus Snape and the Personal Conversation, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of Snape's marathon eavesdropping. I know most of these chapters have been Snape-centric so far, so we'll be hearing a bit more from Draco and Charlie, and also Remus. I've gotten almost to the point where everything I had already written has been typed, so it might be a bit slower to update, but I'm going to try to keep it moving. I kind of like seeing my baby grow :)

“It’s a long story,” said Lupin.

Lupin took a deep breath, let it out, then took another.

“My friends figured out I was a werewolf at the beginning of my first year. It was only a matter of time before someone else figured it out too,” he said.

“Snape?” asked Weasley.

“Yes. I missed class around the same time every month. My friends were always sneaking around the castle, filching me food from the kitchens or taking the passage into Honeyduke’s to buy me chocolate. Lily figured it out fifth year, and Snape suspected something, but she wouldn’t tell him. So he started following us. We had to write and talk in code. We were always looking over our shoulders. We had to test all our food before we could eat…I can’t tell you how many times we turned up Veritaserum in the pumpkin juice.”

“But…how did you know it was Snape,” Weasley asked. “The kitchens aren’t that hard to find, and the house elves are so busy around mealtimes. Anyone could have walked in and dumped Veritaserum into Gryffindor’s food.”

“We knew it was him,” said Lupin, “because James snuck into the kitchens one evening to slip some flatulence powder into the Slytherin soup tureens and found Snape stirring Veritaserum into Gryffindor’s chocolate mousse. They broke out into a duel in the kitchens, and James transfigured him into a great big bat. God, the house elves were in a state...when they finally got him out of the kitchens, he flew away and Argus Filch spent half the night chasing him ‘round the castle with a broom.”

By this time, Weasley was in hysterics, and Severus was feeling rather resentful.

“Oh yes, it was all very funny, until Snape learned Legilimency.”

“Snape could do Legilimency in his fifth year?” asked Weasley.

“Oh yes. But fortunately, so could Sirius and I. Sirius had been taught by his mother, and he learned early and well. He had no choice, I suppose. His mother was very cruel.”

“Did Sirius teach you?”

“The basics, yes. He was very afraid that his brother would attack us with Legilimency and discover my secret, though Regulus had no interest in us whatsoever. Sirius wasn’t a very patient teacher then, so we mostly learned the theory from what we could find in the restricted section and practiced on each other. I took to it quite well, but Pete was pants at it, and James didn’t try very hard because he thought Sirius was being paranoid.”

“But he wasn’t paranoid!” Weasley exclaimed. “Snape found out your secret!”

“Well, yes. But not with Legilimency. Sirius put Snape off using Legilimency by thinking hard about adult magazines. I imagine it was traumatizing.”

_That was Occlumency?_

And here he had always thought Black was just an oversexed horn-dog.

“He tried it with me a few times as well.”

“What did you think about,” Weasley asked, giggling. “Snogging Sirius?”

“Oh, no…We hadn’t quite admitted that to ourselves yet. More like snogging a textbook. I just tried to recall the driest bits of my ancient runes textbook until I managed to bore him out of my mind. No, he couldn’t quite get past my Occlumency, or Sirius’. The problem was keeping him from James and Pete. We had to walk about the castle in a group of four, with James and Pete blindfolded and under a _tinnitus_ charm.”

“ _Tinnitus_?”

“Ear-ringing.”

“And you kept this up all of fifth year?”

“All of fifth year, part of sixth. It was exhausting. We were on edge all the time, snapping at each other. Peter took it particularly badly…he was terrified at the idea that someone could break into his mind and go rummaging through his thoughts. And I hated it, because it was my fault, really. Or at least it was because of me. If I had been outed, I would have been removed from school at best and possibly killed. It wasn’t uncommon for a werewolf to be hunted down and killed in the street then. They…were trying to protect me.”

Lupin was silent for some time.

“I was so happy…to have them,” Lupin said. “And I was so afraid that they would get tired of slinking down corridors, looking over their shoulders… Other people noticed, but it was really only Snape who wouldn’t let it go. And one moon, halfway through sixth year, he caught Sirius alone. We were sick of each other, at each other’s throats. Sirius snuck off a couple of hours before moonrise, probably just to have a few minutes to himself. And Snape got a hold of him, and…Sirius told him.”

“Sirius TOLD him?! Just like THAT?

“Well, no…it wasn’t just like that. It was…worse. He told him how to get past the willow and into the Shack.”

“...What?”

“Yes. Of course, he never thought Snape would follow through with it. Everyone thought the Shack was haunted back then. He figured Snape would get down into the tunnel and hear me transform and turn right back around. Then Snape would be off all our backs and no one would be the wiser. Of course, he was dead wrong. Severus Snape has the kind of curiosity that borders on obsession. He learned mind magic and spent two years stalking us. Of _course_ he wasn’t just going to turn around because of some scary noises. It was sheer, dumb luck that James got to him right as I was about to tear him apart.”

“Oh my God,” Weasley gasped. “He could have died.”

“Yes. And if I had killed him, I would have been killed as well. Put down, like the animal that I am,” said Lupin softly.

“You don’t talk about yourself like that,” Weasley replied. Her voice was hard.

“Sorry, Gin. You’re right.”

They were silent for several long minutes.

“Remus…what happened? To Snape? How come he didn’t…out you?”

“He tried,” Lupin replied. “Went straight to Dumbledore, who, of course, already knew. Snape wanted Sirius and I expelled, but Dumbledore wouldn’t hear of it. He gave Sirius some detentions and threatened to Obliviate Snape if he spoke to anyone of my condition.”

_And there it is. The crux of it. Even the Weasley girl can see the injustice._

He had admitted, during his talk with Dumbledore, that Lupin had no blame in the matter. Though he thought it ill-advised to keep a werewolf locked up so close to schoolchildren, Lupin had not attacked him intentionally. But Black had knowingly sent him to his death. Black deserved to be held accountable, but it was Severus whom Dumbledore had threatened.

It was that night that he had understood. No one would ever choose him. He was in his own corner. He would always come second. Lily had been so quick to write him off, after one word uttered in a moment of anger, but had forgiven Potter years of his arrogance and cruelty. Dumbledore had written him off the same way. He was not a scared child who wanted to be protected; no, he was strange, a freak, a threat. He understood then that there was no place for him among Dumbledore’s ilk.

“I suppose that was a long-winded answer to your question, but there it is. I don’t know if Snape hates me or not, but I don’t think he'll ever see me as anything more than a dangerous beast. And I assume that was why he hated Sirius so much. All he saw was Dumbledore choosing us over him, like he didn’t matter. I don’t think he realized that Dumbledore _couldn’t_ expel us. We were too valuable.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it, Gin. Dumbledore had known for years that the first war was coming; he had probably known it since Tom Riddle left Hogwarts. He knew Tom was gathering forces, courting dark wizards and witches and dark creatures as well.”

“Like werewolves?”

“Yes. What possible reason could Dumbledore have had to be willing to risk housing a werewolf in a school full of children, just so that one child could receive an education? What reason could he have had to protect Sirius, who was not only exceptionally gifted, but also happened to be a member of one of the families central to Voldemort’s rise to power? He was grooming us. I was to be an emissary to the werewolf packs, and Sirius was... destructive, with little regard for his own safety. Sirius was a weapon. We were child soldiers, little more.”

“What do you mean…a weapon?”

“Sirius was determined to die in the war before his blood curse killed him.”

“Wait…Sirius has a blood curse?!”

“All Blacks do. The “Black family insanity.” It’s a generational curse. Most of the Blacks meet their end that way…they go mad.”

“But Sirius is…I mean, I’ve seen him get...but he’s not…dying? Is he? Or going mad?”

“No. Not anymore, at least. But back then, he didn’t even know it was possible to fight the curse. He thought he would live out his life growing steadily madder until he was as twisted as his mother and father. When we were on the front lines together, I watched him fight like a man unafraid to die. None of us saw it for what it was then, for all his joking about it, but I believe that a part of Sirius wanted to be killed before the curse could claim him. And Dumbledore knew it. He had no intention of Sirius surviving the war.”

Severus felt the hot burn of bile rising in his throat. Child soldiers? He thought of Dumbledore in the last days of his life, of what the man had ordered him to do.

_And what of my soul?_

"And what of my soul?" he had asked. And Dumbledore had been silent.

“Really,” Lupin began again, “that prank was the beginning of us falling apart. It planted the seed of betrayal. I didn’t trust him. When we found out about the spy in the Order, he…suspected me. I had never kept secrets from him, but…Dumbledore would send me on missions. And when he asked me where I had been, I…wouldn’t answer him. I wouldn’t tell him. Because I suspected him too. He told James not to let Lily be alone with me in the flat. James believed him. Lily thought we were all being stupid and refused to believe it was either of us. None of us suspected Peter.”

A chair scraped against the floor.

“When Sirius broke out of Azkaban and turned up at Hogwarts chasing Peter, I…I realized what I had done...that whole time, he’d been…”

Lupin trailed off.

“We swore to each other," Lupin said. "Never again." 

“God, you guys have been through a lot of shit."

"You're not wrong."

There was a long and heavy silence, then the sound of rustling fabric that was, unmistakably, a hug.

“Ginny?” Lupin asked.

“Yeah?”

“What brought about this sudden fascination with Snape?”

“I needed to know that you really do trust him.”

“Why?”

“Because he knows something. And I think he knows about Harry and Ron. I want to ask him to help us.”

“Ginny. You know we can’t let him get involved. He can’t find out about-

“I know,” Weasley said, cutting him off.

_What? Find out about what?_

Their chairs scraped back, and he heard footsteps.

_Shit._

He scrambled back down the hallway, past the portrait of Lady Black and into the foyer, and threw himself into an empty cloakroom, trying to control the gasp of his breathing. He realized, belatedly, that he had underestimated the severity of his injuries. Just the act of holding his body up through that conversation had exhausted him. He waited for the muffled footsteps to pass, then forced himself to make the trek back to his borrowed bed. By the time he fell into it, his abdominal muscles were seizing and he was shivering in a cold sweat. He curled in on himself. The conversation was playing itself over in his mind.

He remembered them, roaming Hogwarts in a pack, laughing, elbowing each other, Potter and Black whistling at girls, boisterous and happy. Lupin had made them sound so…scared. They walked so close, heads bent together, leaning on each other. Were they leaning on each other, or holding each other up?

Lupin’s words echoed.

“…if I had been outed…killed in the streets…they were protecting me…I was so happy…they loved me…”

A black jealousy twisted in his gut. He felt the absence of warmth at his own shoulders echoing across the decades. He remembered the breathless hollowness that dug into him when he watched them, pressed close together, stealing food from each other’s plates, the easy way they sat in the shade of the willow tree beside the Black Lake, Black with his head in Lupin’s lap, Pettigrew tossing Fizzing Whizbees into Potter’s open mouth. He had envied them their closeness back then, not realizing that he was part of the reason for it, and somehow, that irony made it feel lonelier.

“blood curse…a weapon…child soldiers…”

He felt the pull of sleep as he slipped into a dream. He was back in the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack, and he could hear a voice.

He followed the sound. Something in him screamed at him to run, but he continued to walk toward it into the darkening gloom, as if on a pre-ordained path. He pushed open the door to the Shack, and the snarling form of the wolf descended on him, so close he could feel the wet heat of its breath. He tried to scream, but no sound came out. Any second now, Potter’s hand would appear and pull him back. The creature was close enough that he could reach out and touch it now. It’s yellow eyes burned into him, and then, it spoke.

“And what of my soul?” it pleaded.

And then he did scream, or at least he became aware that he was still screaming when he found himself on the floor beside the bed, awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	12. Draco Malfoy and the First Apology

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again. I'm back with a Draco chapter. This one made me a little sad writing it, but it won't stay sad for long. Coming next: Draco tries to navigate unfamiliar territory. Hagrid is a big softie. Molly Weasley is not having any shit. Awkwardness ensues all around.
> 
> Also, check out the notes at the end when you're done with this chapter- OUR STORY HAS ART!!!

The sun was high in the sky by the time he reached the winding drive of Malfoy Manor. He felt the familiar crackle of the Manor wards relaxing. Charlie had gone straight to visit Hagrid, and Draco begged off to go and see his mother. He hadn’t owled ahead; Charlie had sprung the news of the reassignment on him at the last minute, and he only just had time to pack his trunk. But he was sort of excited to surprise her. He had missed her.  
What he had not missed was the Manor. He shivered slightly as he walked up the drive, telling himself that it was just the early December chill setting in. He would not allow the memory of that maniac to drive him from his family home. He straightened his back and hastened forward.  
When he opened the carved oak door, he was briefly surprised at the absence of Poppett, the Manor elf. She was usually quite responsive to visitors. But then again, visitors to Malfoy Manor seldom arrived unannounced. He wiped his boots on the mat and headed to the east wing parlor. There was a time when mother would never have tolerated the incivility of eating a meal anywhere but the formal dining room, but after the war, she had closed the door to the entire main wing of the house and warded it shut. Now they lived only in the extremities, reclaiming rooms and halls and parlors that had long fallen into disuse. He and mother had not spoken of the absence of space, as they didn’t speak of other absences.  
Funny, he thought. He had been afraid of the dark, unused wings as a child. But after the war, as they had gone from room to empty room, pulling away dust covers and throwing open ancient curtains to chase out the gloom, it had felt like discovering a new world. He shivered again.  
He stopped in the hall outside the parlor and watched her for a moment. He had always been in awe of her, ever since he was a child. In awe of her calm and her effortless grace. In awe of the strength that lay under the surface of her, always waiting. She was cutting into a boiled egg, her back to him, watching a pair of robins through the open window. Her hair was up in a pristine bun.  
“Mother,” he said.  
She turned around, and a smile lit her face. She was beautiful, and he loved her.  
He went to her and she put her arms around him and squeezed for just a moment. He kissed her cheek.  
“Let me look at you,” she said, holding him at arm’s length and examining him. He hadn’t changed from his work clothes, and he regretted it briefly.  
“You look stronger, darling. You were so thin when you left. You look healthy.”  
This was likely an understatement; he had been thin, sickly, and pale, with deep shadows under his eyes. He had looked awful. But working out in the open air at the reserve had done him good. The heavy meals of stew and fresh bread and steaming polenta had put him in order, and after months of laboring at the reserve and suffering through Charlie’s punishing, early-morning physical training, he had put on more muscle than he ever had in his life.  
“You look well too, mother. I’ve missed you,” he said, and meant it.  
She ushered him into a chair and snapped her fingers, and Poppett appeared with a ‘pop.’  
“Young Master Draco,” she gasped. “Poppett is not knowing you were coming! Oh, bad Poppett! Bad Poppett for not setting Master Draco a place at the table!”  
“That’s quite alright Poppett. Draco didn’t owl ahead,” she said, looking at him sternly. “But it’s a lovely surprise, just as well.”  
“Oh yes,” said Poppett, conjuring a plate of poached salmon and a bowl of fresh salad. “Poppett is glad to be seeing Master Draco so well.”  
He smiled at her, then at his mother.  
“Draco. It’s been weeks since you’ve written. What have you been doing with yourself, darling?”  
“You know what I’ve been doing, mother. Working on the reserve. I’ve mostly been looking after the long-term patients, the ones that are used to humans and less dangerous. Though I did have to help Charlie treat a wild Highland Spike-tail for scale rot-”  
“Draco,” mother said sternly. “That is hardly appropriate for the table.”  
“Yes, mother.”  
“I will never understand what possessed you to take up dragon-taming…running off with that awful Weasley boy.”  
“It’s not dragon-taming, mother. It’s magizoology. And I didn’t go running off, I applied for a highly selective apprenticeship, and Weasley was willing to take me on. And he’s really quite accomplished, you know. He’s currently the only wizard in Europe to hold a double mastery in both magizoology and veterinary healing, it’s very academically rigorous-”  
“Don’t get defensive, Draco darling. I only wish that you had considered your options.”  
He stifled a sigh. Mother couldn’t stand people who sighed aloud.  
“Tell me about Romania, Draco. Magic has deep roots there. I’ve heard it’s beautiful.”  
“It is,” he said. He launched into stories of the reserve, and the mountains, and the warm and gregarious reserve staff, and the thick, heavy meals taken outside in the open air. He smiled as he talked, and she smiled back at him. It hit him then, how beautiful it was, and he felt a prick of longing.  
“How long will you stay, Draco? Oh, tell me you’ll stay through Christmas,” mother said.  
“Oh. I’m here to stay, at least for now,” he said. “Charlie was asked to act as interim lead veterinary healer at the London Menagerie. Their healer was killed unexpectedly by a rouge nundu, and Charlie offered to step in until they can find a replacement. It could be several years before anyone else qualified can leave the field- most magizoologists tend to spend most of their careers pursuing their own research. It’s quite a unique position.”  
“That’s lovely, but I’m worried for you. Isn’t it dangerous?”  
“I’ll be quite alright, mother.”  
“As long as you’re certain, darling.”  
They finished their meal in companionable silence, and he offered her his arm as they made their way to the sitting room. She flicked her wand, and a fire appeared, crackling merrily in the grate. He watched as she stared into it, a far-away look in her eyes. He knew he would have to apologize to her; the oath he had made tugged at him. But there was so much. He didn’t know where to start. He sighed.  
Mother turned her head sharply.  
“Draco, darling. Please. There’s no need to huff.”  
“Sorry, mother.” He almost sighed again, but caught himself. He had clearly been spending too much time around Charlie.  
“Mother?”  
“Yes?”  
“I want to tell you I’m sorry,” he said, all in a rush.  
She turned slowly and looked at him, her head tilted just slightly to the side. Funny. Mother hated people tilting their heads almost as much as she hated them sighing. He wondered if she knew she was doing it.  
“What could you possibly have to apologize for, darling?” she asked.  
“Everything. I should have listened to you when you wanted to pull me out and send me to Beauxbatons. I should never have fixed that cabinet. I should have trusted Severus when he tried to help me. I’m sorry.”  
“What on Earth, Draco?”  
“I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.”  
“Draco, you were a boy! It was my place to protect you. What is this about?”  
“I had to apologize.”  
She considered him for a moment.  
“I don’t like it, Draco, she said finally. “Whatever has gotten into you, I don’t like it. It’s that boy, isn’t it?”  
“What boy?” he asked, though he already knew where she was going.  
“That Weasley boy, Draco. I will not have some ill-mannered, common…”  
She had drawn herself up imperiously, and Draco could see the tell-tale signs of the beginning of a tirade. Father had been prone to a sharp tongue, but it was mother who truly had a temper.  
“Draco, I want you to stop this nonsense. I will not have you treated like some sort of criminal because of something that was outside of your control. Stop this dragon nonsense and come home where you belong. The air has done you good, but it’s time for you to take your place as the head of this family.”  
“Mother, I can’t-”  
“I’ve had the Greengrasses over for tea three times this week, Draco.”  
Oh, no. Here it goes.  
“It’s time to consider your future. Their youngest daughter, Astoria-”  
“Mother, please, I-”  
“Listen to me, Draco-”  
“You don’t understand, mother, I-”  
“Draco!” she snapped. “I have asked the Greengrasses to tea tomorrow after lunch, and there is absolutely no excuse for you not to join us. I will expect to see you at one-fifteen sharp. And you will dress presentably and behave in a manner befitting of your name. Miss Greengrass is a very eligible match for you, Draco-”  
“MOTHER!” he bellowed. She looked at him, aghast. “I’m not quitting my apprenticeship, mother,” he said. “I’m not moving back to the Manor. And I’m not going to waste any of our time pretending to court Astoria Greengrass.”  
“Why on Earth not, Draco! Don’t be absurd! Astoria is a lovely young woman-”  
“YES, mother. A woman. She’s a woman,” he said. “And I’m not attracted to women. I'm sorry, mother, but I'm gay.”  
And there it was. The heart of the matter. The one apology he had always felt, deepest within himself. He had finally said it out loud.  
She stared at him in silence.  
“Draco, you are the last of both lines capable of producing a child. The last of the Malfoys. The last of the Blacks. Life is not a fairy tale, Draco. You need not be in love with your partner to create a family and live a peaceful life.  
“That’s unfair, mother. You and father were in love. You don’t understand what you’re asking me to do.”  
“Draco. Your blood will die with you.”  
“Then let it die!”  
She gasped, mouth agape. Then anger flashed across her face. Her jaw clicked shut. Her hand flew out and slapped him hard across the face.  
“You’ve broken my heart, Draco," she snarled. "You’ve shamed me.”  
“Mother-”  
“How dare you stand in the house that your fathers built and turn your backs on them?”  
“Mother, please-”  
“GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE, DRACO!”  
Her eyes were blazing; her porcelain skin was mottled red. He took one last look at her, then turned from the room and fled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OUR STORY HAS ART! The amazingly talented [@thisbloodycat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbloodycat/works) made glorious fanart for chapter 12!
> 
> You can check out more of their awesome art on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/thisbloodycat/618599540817313792)
> 
> Also... Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	13. Draco Malfoy and the Time He Almost Gave Molly Weasley a Heart Attack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I feel like Draco is a bit awkward in these chapters, which is sort of intentional. He's having to navigate social situations he's unfamiliar with, he's not used to having to apologize, and he doesn't really know how to play nice. Meanwhile, he's confused by his relationship with Charlie because he still hates the idea of being apprenticed to a Weasley, but he also can't help but sort of hero-worship Charlie because Charlie's a badass. 
> 
> I don't know if I like awkward Draco or sarcastic, in-control Draco better. Anyone have a favorite Draco characterization?
> 
> Anyway, if you're tuning in waiting for another Snape chapter, we'll get back to him in the next two chapters. We'll also be getting a Remus chapter soon.

Draco pulled the heavy door closed behind him. In the hours he had passed visiting his mother, the temperature had dropped sharply, and a heavy rain had started to fall. He stared out at it, shivering. The only clothes in his possession were the lightweight work robes and fireproof boots and gloves he had brought back with him from the reserve, and he couldn’t bring himself to go back inside to retrieve his wardrobe. He remembered the fury on his mother’s face and blinked back tears. She had never looked at him that way before. She had yelled, yes, and been quite cross, even. But never disappointed. Never loathing.

He stood on the Manor porch and missed Pansy. She had seen him at his worst for seven years. _“Don’t be dramatic, Draco darling. Your face gets all red and snotty when you cry,”_ she would say, rubbing his back the whole time. But he had cut himself off from his friends after the trials; none of them needed the bad press that came with the Malfoy name. He thought of Charlie, and was struck by a pang of loneliness. Charlie was the closest thing he had to a friend in the world, and he wasn’t even sure Charlie would be happy to see him if he turned up now.

Finally, the cold won over his apprehension. He apparated outside the castle grounds, and made his way across the quidditch pitch to Hagrid’s hut. The walk was long, and he was soaked through by the time he reached Hagrid’s thatched door. He wondered why Charlie had come straight here; surely, he had wanted to see his mum and dad and his multitude of siblings?

Hagrid’s hut was lit from the inside with a warm, yellow light, and the spicy smell of cinnamon was drifting out an open window. Draco rapped three times on the door and stood back, listening to the sound of Fang the Boarhound’s deep woofing.

“All righ’ Fang, get back, yeh great lump.”

The door flew open, and he stood, dripping and shivering violently, in front of a flabbergasted Hagrid.

“Draco Malfoy?” Hagrid asked. “What the ruddy hell're you doin’ here?”

“I’m looking for Charlie,” he replied through chattering teeth. “He said he’d come to see you.”

“He did do, but he’s gone on home now,” Hagrid said, moving to shut the door.

“Wait,” Draco said. “Can you tell me where to find him?”

“An’ why should I do that, eh? Whatever business yeh think yeh ‘ave with Charlie Weasley, you can forget about it. Charlie’s a good lad, doesn’t need to get mixed up with your lot.”

“Well he spends quite a bit of time with my lot,” Draco snapped, “seeing as I’m his apprentice!”

Hagrid blinked at him.

“Yeh’re what, now?”

“His apprentice,” he said, forcing himself to speak calmly. “Charlie is my mentor. If you could be so kind as to tell me where I might find him,” he said in his most diplomatic tone, “I’ll be right out of your way. I won’t trouble you a moment longer.”

“Oh, hell,” said Hagrid, and he heaved a long, heavy sigh, the kind that would have had mother beside herself. “Come on in, then. Out of the rain with yeh.”

He hesitated a moment too long on the threshold, and Hagrid seized him by the arm and hauled him into the hut.

The inside was warm and sweet-smelling, and it took all of Draco’s self-discipline to remember his manners and stop himself from gawking around. When Hagrid turned to dig through a drawer, he took the chance to look surreptitiously around. The walls were hung with thick fur pelts, and a fire roared in the wood stove. On top of the stove was a pot of tea, and Draco could see an open jar of cinnamon sticks on the counter beside a deep sink. In one corner was an enormous, rustic table, with three matching chairs, in the other, an equally-oversized bed, piled high with patchwork quilts. In the center of the bed, Fang the Boarhound was curled up, his tail thumping happily.

_Oh, God. He sleeps in the bed with his dog._

Hagrid turned back around, brandishing a frilly pink umbrella, and Draco realized he was dry. The next thing he knew, he was bundled in a giant leather overcoat in front of the wood stove, and Hagrid was handing him a cup of something hot.

“Cinnamon firewhiskey,” Hagrid said with a wink.

Draco smiled blandly and mimed taking a sip of the drink. He was certain whatever was in it was unsanitary. The entire hut looked unsanitary. He watched in morbid fascination as Hagrid scratched his bushy beard and wondered idly if the man had fleas.

Just then, he felt the oath tugging at him.

_No. I’m not going to do it._

The tug became more insistent.

_Absolutely not._

The minutes ticked by in awkward silence. The oath was now a persistent itch, grating on Draco’s consciousness. He clamped his teeth shut around the apology.

_No._

“Yeh all righ’ there, Malfoy? Yeh look a little green around the gills,” he said. “Want me to top yeh up? This’ll warm the ol’ bones fer sure.”

He shook a brown stone jug in Draco’s direction.

“N-no thank you…got to make sure I’m ok to apparate and all,” Draco said weakly, shaking his head.

“That’s a smart lad,” Hagrid said, nodding approvingly. “Well come on, then. I reckon Charlie’ll get to worryin’ soon." He grabbed a jar of Floo powder from a shelf above the stove and handed it to Draco. " Yeh just toss the powder straight onto the wood fire, there yeh go.”

Hagrid patted him heavily on the shoulder.

“Yeh know, Charlie told me he’d taken an apprentice, but I would’a laughed ‘im outta town if he’d told me it was Draco Malfoy. Yeh hardly seem the type for taming dragons-”

“It’s _not_ dragon taming,” Draco said testily. “It’s magizoology. There’s a difference!”

_Why does no one understand that?_

“Course there is,” chuckled Hagrid indulgently. “Well go on, then. An’ you tell ‘ol Charlie to stop back by soon. There’s a cockatrice loose in the forest, and I could use another set ‘a hands roundin’ her up.”

“Er…I’ll pass that along…”

Draco stared at the emerald flames burning in the stove grate.

“Yeh just call fer the Burrow,” Hagrid prompted.

“Oh, right…”

He took another pinch of powder and tossed it in for good measure.

“The Burrow,” he said firmly, and he fell, disoriented, until his knees hit the warm brick of a hearth.

He stood up and promptly tripped over the dragging tail of the giant coat he had forgotten he was still wearing, then stumbled, arms flailing, out of the fireplace and straight into Molly Weasley, who jumped back and brandished her wand.

“MUM! Don’t hex him!”

_Charlie. Thank God._

He stood stock still, eyeing the wand in Molly Weasley’s hand, and stared beseechingly at Charlie.

She looked from Charlie to Draco then back to Charlie.

“Charles Weasley. Why is this boy in my living room?”

“Er…I might have forgotten to mention…”

“ _Charlie you will explain yourself this minute,”_ she snapped, and he saw the man visibly shrink.

“Did I tell you mum? I’ve taken an apprentice!”

“You’ve what? Charles, you have some nerve. You don’t write me for months and then you just turn up out of the clear blue sky, covered in burns-”

“Mum, I’ve had these for years-”

“And you look like a wild man with that hair, Charlie. Are those leaves in your hair? What have you been doing? And then you tell me you’ve taken in a… _Malfoy…_ as an apprentice…”

She glared at Draco, her eyes flicking to his left forearm, and under his sleeve, he felt a phantom burning.

“You know what that boy’s father tried to do to Ginny, Charles-”

“I’m sorry!” Draco blurted.

_Damn it._

He tried to force the apology back down his throat, but it was too late. It was already halfway out of his mouth.

“Mrs. Weasley, please, I… I know I’m probably the last person you want to see. Charlie and I planned for me to stay with my mother while I work under him. It isn’t Charlie’s fault…I never meant to intrude.”

A lump was growing in his throat.

_Not now. Don’t you do it, Draco. You are not going to start crying now._

He felt the telltale prickle of hot tears in the corners of his eyes. He had always been too emotional, too quick to anger, too quick to lose control. He tried to channel his mother, who grew cold, or flew into a temper, but never, ever cried. But at the thought of his mother, his eyes welled up. He could feel his face growing hot.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Weasley said. She took one look at his face, and sighed heavily. “Well, come on in, then.”

And for the second time that evening, he found himself bundled in front of a fire. Charlie plopped down on the hearth beside him, and Mrs. Weasley conjured them both a mug of hot cider out of thin air and shuffled away.

“Should I bother asking how your visit went?” Charlie asked gently.

Draco gripped his mug, letting it warm his palms.

“I suppose you’ll find out soon enough anyway,” Draco said. “Mother and I have…a difference of opinion about the direction I’ve chosen for my life. I am no longer…welcome in my family’s home.”

He hated the crack in his voice.

“Can I ask what happened?”

Draco took a deep breath.

“I’m gay,” he blurted, wincing. “I told her that I’m gay. And that I have no plan to marry a woman and produce a child.”

“That’s mighty sentimental of you,” Charlie said with a wry smile.

“Yes, well. I’ve seen what happens to those arranged marriages. I won’t do that to myself.”

“Not even for your mother?” Charlie asked. “You’re willing to fight another Voldemort to protect her, but you won’t raise a family for her?”

“No,” said Draco. “Perhaps that makes me selfish. But…I saw my friends’ parents…Blaise’s mother killed _seven_ of her husbands. Theo’s mother killed _herself_ to get away. My Aunt Walburga used to charm the bruises off her face before she could leave her house. My parents loved each other. It was different for them. I can’t…give her what she’s asking from me. I’d give my life for my mother. But I won’t give myself.”

“Good,” Charlie said. “Don’t.”

And Draco let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Charlie, dear,” Mrs. Weasley said from the doorway, eyes watery and clearly eavesdropping. “Go and show Draco where he can hang up his coat. Then you boys come down and help me start dinner. The twins and Percy are coming, and Ginny and Luna should be here too, and who knows who they’ll show up with, so we’ve got a full house tonight.”

“Yes, mum!” Charlie called after her as she shuffled down the hall.

“Come on, then,” Charlie said, holding out a hand and hauling Draco to his feet. “I’ll give you the tour and show you where we’re sleeping.”

“Sleeping? I mean…are you…is your…”

“You’re staying here,” Charlie said firmly. “You heard mum. You could argue with her if you wanted. I’ve been losing arguments with her for near three decades now, but you’re welcome to try.”

Charlie was smiling, and Draco felt his mouth turn up at the corners. He followed Charlie out of the room, feeling somehow both heavier and lighter at the same time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	14. Severus Snape and the Loudest Breakfast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Hermione refuses to beat around the bush. 
> 
> Coming up soon: A Weasley family gathering, Remus' backstory, and more Malfoy family dynamics. We haven't seen the last of Narcissa!

Severus woke up to the smell of something delicious cooking two floors below him and realized that he was starving. He lay still for a moment, taking inventory of what was in pain, then eased himself up into a sitting position, groaning out loud. He felt like he had been hit by the Knight Bus. Sliding off the bed, he put his weight on his feet tentatively. The wound across his stomach had been healed without so much as a scar, and he was grudgingly impressed, but the area throbbed loudly. He had underestimated the damage last night, but he knew better now, and made his way down to the kitchen gingerly.

He could hear the ruckus before he even got to the bottom of the stairs.

The kitchen table was covered almost entirely by books, and a harried-looking Hermione Granger was buried face-first into the one in front of her. Lovegood was hovering over her shoulder, head cocked, with a pensive expression on her face. Weasley stood at the counter, cutting a cantaloupe into chunks, and Neville Longbottom was frying a mountain of bacon and sausages in a pan beside Black, who was fighting with his elf.

“Master Sirius will sit at the table and wait for his breakfast to be served to him!” Kreacher barked, jumping to grab at a pan that Black was holding high over his head.

“But flipping the omelette is the fun part,” Black pouted.

“Kreacher can be flipping the omelette-”

Longbottom reached over Kreacher’s head to grab another slab of bacon, and Black flipped the omelette high into the air with a flourish, and grinned as Kreacher snatched the pan and caught the omelette as it fell.

“Master Sirius will _go sit and wait for his breakfast_.”

“But you let everyone else cook! It’s not fair!”

“When everyone else is cooking, they is not setting the stove on fire!”

“That was only the one time!”

“Kreacher was scrubbing the scorch marks off the stove for days!”

Lupin appeared from the pantry, whose door had been repaired at some point in the night, with a bag of sugar, and stirred a cupful into an enormous bowl of pancake batter.

“Why can’t I flip the omelette?”

“Neville, will you pass me that honeydew melon?”

“It’s behind Sirius.”

“Budge over, Sirius, would you?”

“Ooooh, you're making pancakes! Brilliant!”

“Pancakes? Moony, can I lick the spoon?”

“Toss me that melon…no, just toss it!”

“Moony…Moony, let me lick it. I want to lick it!”

“Master Sirius is in the way of the stove! The bacon will burn! The bacon!”

Severus’ head was spinning from the racket.

“Oh, Professor Snape! You’re awake!”

Suddenly, everyone was silent. And staring at him.

“Er…excuse me,” he said, and backed slowly from the room.

A few minutes later, he was back in Dean Thomas’ room, staring at the floor and trying to control his breathing. The door burst open, and Weasley strode through without knocking.

“Uh...Snape? Are you alright?”

“Certainly.”

“Sorry if we were a bit loud.”

She came over and plopped on the edge of the bed beside him.

“I uh…I yelled at everybody to shut up, if you’d like to come down to breakfast. Or…I could bring you up a plate?”

“That’s quite alright, Miss Weasley. I did spend many years taking my meals in the Great Hall. I’m accustomed to a bit of racket.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “I’m glad we didn’t put you off breakfast.”

She smiled at him as he followed her from the room.

The table was much more subdued upon his return; Granger had cleared her books away and was placing a large bowl of cut-up fruit in the center of the table, Longbottom was handing out plates, and Black was distributing forks and knives. Weasley marched over to Lupin and bumped him with her hip, and he scooted his chair over obediently to make room for her. She plopped down and conjured another chair beside her, and Severus slid into it and accepted a plate and silverware. The atmosphere was thick with tension; Granger kept glancing surreptitiously at him, and Longbottom seemed to be pretending he didn’t exist at all, launching into a loud conversation with Black about the virtues of fermented stinksap. Lovegood acted as though he had always been there and that nothing was out of the ordinary, and Lupin was looking at him with a bit of a guilty expression.

He cut into his pancakes. Lovegood was pouring maple syrup over her cantaloupe. He tried not to stare. He watched his unlikely table mates as he chewed his breakfast. Beside him, Ginny Weasley was shoveling bacon into her mouth at an alarming rate. Black ate with the refined grace befitting of the Lord of the House of Black, a manner which was at odds with his dingy, ripped t-shirt and boxer shorts. He thought of Regulus, how he had used to make fun of the boy for eating pompously. Longbottom pushed all of his food onto separate parts of the plate so it didn’t touch. Granger was staring at him openly now, stabbing her food without looking and occasionally missing her mouth.

Finally, Lupin broke the silence.

“Severus,” Lupin said quietly, leaning around Weasley to look him in the eye. “I wanted to thank you for looking after Ginny. She shouldn’t have been out by herself. I’m indebted to you, for protecting her.”

“Nonsense, Lupin,” he replied. “Why should Miss Weasley need you to chaperone her on her vacation. This is hardly the 1800’s.”

Lupin blinked at him.

“ _Vacation,”_ Weasley said pointedly to Lupin. “I was only sightseeing, Remus! Remember?”

“Oh, right. Yes.”

From across the table, he could see Granger narrow her eyes.

“Excuse me, Professor Snape, sir,” she said mildly, “But what were you doing in Sway in the middle of the night? It’s hardly a tourist destination, and anyway I got the impression that you spent most of your time at your shop.”

“Still sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, I see, Miss Granger,” he retorted.

“I rather think it’s up to me to decide where my nose belongs, sir,” she snapped back viciously. “Especially when I’ve just discovered a former Death Eater skulking around the last known location of my fiancé and my best friend.” She rose to her feet, and something has changed about her, he realized. All the girlishness and innocence are gone. She watches him coldly.

“Hermione,” Weasley says. “It wasn’t him.”

She turned to Weasley.

“How can you be certain.”

“He saved my ass from the Death Eaters. It wasn’t him.”

She turned back to him.

“You were there because you knew about Harry and Ron’s disappearance,” she said to him matter-of-factly.

He sighed. There was no point in denying it.

“Yes.”

“How?” she asked him.

“I am no more willing to reveal my source of information that you are, Miss Granger.”

“Fine,” she said, sinking slowly back into her chair. “Fair enough. Then what? What do you know?”

“Likely just as much as you do, Miss Granger. I am aware that Potter and Weasley were sent by the Aurory to investigate potential Death Eater activity in Lyndhurst, as well as several nearby villages. They investigated each site, finishing in Sway, and reported their findings to Senior Auror Nymphadora Tonks. They were reported missing approximately twelve hours later, and the Aurory has been unsuccessful in locating them since.”

“And why did _you_ decide to investigate? What do you care what’s happened to Harry and Ron?” she asked, blunt but without malice.

“I don’t,” he replied honestly. “Potter and Weasley are fully qualified wizards, and Aurors besides. Whatever happens to them is the result of their own negligence. I am, however, concerned with the activities of the remaining Death Eaters. It seems my former…compatriots…took exception to my defection from their ranks. They want me dead. I have a vested interest in keeping abreast of their movements. And if rumors are true, locating Potter and Weasley will lead me straight to them.”

She leaned back and crossed her arms, watching him silently. The rest of the table was looking back and forth between them, and again he felt a prickle of panic at being watched. He slid his chair back and winced as a pain shot through his abdomen.

“Excuse me, please.”

“Of course,” she said, her brow furrowing in concern.

He carried himself straight-backed from the room, ignoring the urge to double over.

“Is he alright?” he heard her ask.

“He will be,” Lovegood replied, “but he was injured quite badly. He needs to rest for a while. Sirius, he really ought not be out of bed.”

“Well you can be in charge of telling him what to do then,” he heard Sirius retort.

By the time he managed to stagger back up to the second floor and fell into bed, he resigned himself to following Lovegood’s advice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	15. Draco Malfoy and the Head Full of Snakes

Draco followed Charlie through the Burrow, listening politely and trying not to stare. He had finally gotten a good look around the den and was alarmed to find that nothing in the room matched anything else. The large, lead-glass windows were adorned with chocolate-brown curtains, the ends of which appeared to have been set on fire at some point. There was an oversized sofa, a deep amber velvet that was threadbare and ripping at the arms, pushed up against one wall. Adjacent was a dingy, blue-and-white plaid loveseat, sagging in the middle. In front of the sofa was a long tea table, covered in scuffs and water-rings. Beside the loveseat sat a scuffed wooden end table, groaning under the weight of a stack of dusty books. On top of the stack was an old wireless, dirty with years of fingerprints. The bookcase in the corner was in rougher shape, books piled into every crack and bursting from every crevice. Books were piled on top of the case, and on the floor beside it. The fireplace mantle was festooned with books, all covered in ash and Floo dust.

Above the mantle were boughs of holly, and all along it were stockings, with names embroidered in gold thread. Percy, Fleur, Billy, Charlie, Victoire, Mum, Dad, Harry, Ronald, Hermione. The space on the mantle had run out, and someone had nailed the remaining stockings directly to the wall beside it. Fred, George, Sirius, Remus, Ginny, Luna, Neville, Dean. There was a large fir tree in the corner, covered in red and silver baubles and strings of gold tinsel.

“This is the sitting room,” Charlie said unnecessarily. Sometimes we eat in here if there aren’t a lot of people over. There’s lots to read, too, if you like books on magical theory. Most of them are family heirlooms, so they’re a bit dry,” he said.

He made his way toward the narrow doorway, and Draco followed, trying to school the expression of horror from his face. The doorway led into a small foyer, with a coat rack beside the front door, and hooks on the walls to hang hats and scarves. There was a ground floor bathroom and a staircase, and on the other end of the foyer, a doorway to the kitchen.

Charlie headed up the creaking staircase and stopped on the first landing.

“This is Ginny’s room, and across from her is the twins. I would recommend never going in there for any reason if you value your life,” Charlie said, and privately, Draco thought that all the gold in Gringotts couldn’t persuade him to go near any place where the twins slept.

They continued up the stairs to the second landing.

“Percy’s room over here on the left. He hardly ever spends the night at home anymore, but he’ll hex you sideways if you so much as touch his doorknob. On the left is Ron and Harry’s room. That little door there is a linen closet. If you ever need blankets or towels, that’s where they are. And that door is the second floor bathroom.”

The third floor was home to a bedroom, a bathroom, another staircase, and a second, odd, spiral staircase that seemed older than the rest of the floor.

“That spiral staircase goes up to the attic. It was part of the original house before mum and dad added on. It’s pretty cool. We used to slide down the banisters when we were kids. The other stairs go up to mum and dad’s room. Me and Billy’s room is here.”

He opened the door, and Draco followed him inside. The room was small. The two beds were at a right angle to each other, pushed up against the walls. Both were covered in heavy blue blankets and a mountain of pillows. He could tell which bed was Charlie’s- on the nightstand beside it was a framed picture of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, several years before Draco’s time, with Charlie standing front and center, carrying a battered broom and a pair of seeker’s goggles. A tall, rather pretty girl, who Draco assumed to be the team captain, was holding the Quidditch cup, beaming. Bill’s bed was made up crisply, and his nightstand was bare.

“Billy doesn’t sleep here anymore now that he’s got Fleur and Victoire, so you can bunk in here with me. There’s nothing in the nightstand or the closet, so go ahead and put your stuff in there. There’s some good books on the shelf too, if you like to read.”

He watched Draco expectantly, but Draco didn’t move.

“Don’t you want to put your things away?”

“I didn’t…have time to fetch anything from the Manor,” Draco said. “I just…left. I have my trunk from the reserve, but all I have are these clothes and a couple sets of work robes. Plus my books and things.”

“You don’t have any winter clothes?”

“Er…no.”

Charlie frowned.

“Well, no matter,” he said. “You can borrow some of mine for now, and you can go shopping next time we’re in Diagon Alley. You might want to grab a few sets of muggle clothes too; we’re going to be undercover in muggle London quite a bit from here on out.”

“Right,” said Draco awkwardly, knowing he ought to offer his thanks, but feeling rather ungracious at the thought of wearing someone else’s clothes.

“Good, then,” Charlie said. “I’m going to go down and help mum. Feel free to dig through my closet and find something warm to wear. If you want to take a shower, I’d recommend the bathroom on this floor. The second-floor bath hasn’t drained properly since the time Ginny and the twins tried hatching frog spawn in the tub.”

Draco blinked at Charlie’s back as he ambled from the room.

_Well, then. Frog spawn. Good to know._

Charlie’s closet was full of hand-knit jumpers, t-shirts, and muggle jeans. There were a few sets of work robes, some old school uniforms with the Prefect badges still pinned to the front of them, a set of mouldering dress robes that Draco grimaced at. Draco grabbed a plain black t-shirt and a pair of jeans at random and pulled a wooly navy-blue jumper from the closet shelf.

He fetched himself a towel and opened the creaking door to the third-floor bathroom. The shower was mounted onto the side of an ancient, cast-iron bathtub. He turned the taps and found that the water came out piping hot. He stripped, pulled the curtain shut around the tub and stepped under the spray. There was a glass jar full of what looked to be homemade soap, and he unscrewed the lid to discover a pleasant, piney scent.

He let out a sigh and rubbed his face with his hands.

_What am I doing here?_

He wanted to go home. He wanted to sleep in his own bed, and wear his own clothes, and sit at his own desk with his own books. His eyes stung, and he rubbed them. He missed Pansy with a sudden, fierce longing. He missed Pansy pressing his head against her shoulder, and rubbing his back, and calling him out every time he tried to wallow in self-pity for more than a day at a time. He missed Blaise, who kept scotch whiskey hidden in his school trunk and would pour them a glass, proclaiming shock and disgust at all the right moments while Draco ranted. He missed Theo sitting quietly beside him, watching his outbursts with the uncertain curiosity of a magizoologist studying something foreign and poisonous, and knowing that Theo was trying to be understanding in the only way he knew how. He missed Greg, who would sit on the edge of his bed with a tin of sweets and pass it back and forth between them, dutifully ignoring Draco’s red-faced tears. He missed Vince, who…he missed Vince. He wanted to go home.

_Well you can’t, can you? You can’t go home, and you’re not going to get what you want, and you’re not helping anything by acting like a child._

He cut the taps and stepped out of the shower, toweling himself dry. He pulled on Charlie Weasley’s old clothes and tried to ignore how he was swimming in them. He wiped the foggy glass and stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and frowned at himself until the urge to cry had passed. And then, with a sigh, he made his way down to the kitchen.

He found Charlie busily chopping a mountain of celery, while Mrs. Weasley scrubbed potatoes over the kitchen sink. Charlie smiled when he saw him, and this made Draco feel slightly better.

“All cleaned up then? Here, you can do the carrots.”

He handed Draco a knife, and he held it awkwardly and tried to sneak a glance at Charlie to see what he was supposed to be doing.

“You just chop them. Into chunks. Haven’t you ever cut up carrots before?”

“No. We had a house elf for that.” Molly Weasley huffed under her breath, and Draco pretended not to hear.

“Oh. Well. Er…it’s not much different than preparing potions ingredients, really.”

“Alright.”

_Potions. I can do potions._

He diced the carrots as though he were dicing shrivelfigs, cutting them into even chunks, and Charlie nodded approvingly. The repetitive chopping was oddly soothing, and after a few minutes, he forgot to be embarrassed. Beside him, Charlie tipped his tray of celery into an enormous steel cauldron, and Draco followed suit. They started on the onions and potatoes, then diced what looked like half of a raw cow, and before long, they had filled the cauldron.

At the sound of the front door opening, Charlie perked up.

“Mum! We’re here!” he heard a voice shout.

“That’ll be the twins, then. And Percy too, it sounds like.”

He could hear the sound of them bickering from the other room. Suddenly, he was struck by apprehension. He hadn’t given the Weasleys any reason to be happy to see him. The last time he had encountered the twins, they were fighting on the Quidditch pitch. And he had done his fair share of taunting Percy Weasley as well, when he had been a prefect. For the second time, he began to wonder what he was doing here.

“Well, go say hi to your brothers, Charles, what are you waiting for? Draco can stay here and help me finish,” Mrs. Weasley said, noticing his expression.

Charlie grinned at them and sprinted out of the room.

“Now we can start on the pies,” Mrs. Weasley said, turning to him. “We’ve got jars and jars of strawberry preserves from the garden…that will make a nice filling, I think.”

He nodded dumbly.

“Come along, dear. You’re just the right height to get the jars down off the top shelf. Normally I get Percy to do it…you can’t trust Ronnie or the twins not to sneak off with a jar,” she said with a wink.

She pulled back the corner of a tattered rug, revealing a door built into the floor. She tugged the brass ring handle, hauled the door up and open, and plunged down the dark stairs. He followed her, wondering whether he should light up his wand, when a ball of light appeared in the palm of her hand, and he was mildly alarmed at the casual use of wandless magic. She let go of the light, and it floated in the air above them, illuminating the room.

The walls were lined with shelves, and every shelf was laden with glass jars. There was enough food down here to feed a small army for weeks, he thought. But then again, the Weasleys were a small army, especially considering they seemed to have absorbed half of the Gryffindors in his year.

“Here we are,” she said, coming to a stop in front of him. “Be a dear and reach up there for me. Three jars should do.”

He retrieved her strawberries and followed her as she puttered around the cellar, piling various pots and jars into his arms. He felt the tug of the apology again, but he pushed it aside.

There was a loud crashing from above, and Mrs. Weasley sighed.

“That will be the twins. I’ll bet you anything Ginny’s come in and they’re chasing her around the house on broomsticks.”

Draco stared at her, trying to decide if she was joking.

There was another crash, and she hurried up the stairs with Draco in tow.

“Now, Draco. I’ll let you mix the dough,” she said, as she poured ingredients from each of her jars into a large, stone bowl. “Flour, a bit sugar, a pinch of salt.”

There was a loud crash, and a cackling laughter, and Draco looked at her, alarmed.

“Oh, it’s alright, dear. If they’re laughing, they’re fine.”

“Right,” he said.

“Now stir the dry ingredients together, there you are.”

He stirred obediently, and studiously ignored the sound of barking, another crash, and what he thought might be someone playing a bagpipe.

“Now we’ll cut in the butter and the shortening like this, then add the ice water bit by bit. Now you try.”

“Like this?”

“Yes, quite right.”

Another crash, then yelling.

“Oh, now what? You just mix that in for me, dear,” she said, and puttered out of the kitchen.

He mixed the dough. There was more yelling, and the smell of smoke. He tried to imagine the look on his mother’s face if she could see him right now, and failed. Mrs. Weasley was gone for quite some time.

Finally, she reappeared, with singed hair and soot smeared across one cheek.

“Oh, lovely, Draco,” she said when he showed her his dough. She helped him flour it and roll it out, then press it into a pie tin and brush it with egg. They filled the pie with strawberries and covered it with another layer of crust. Then they made four more pies, each the same, and Mrs. Weasley left the room three more times, until finally, she threw everyone out into the garden. He could see them zooming around on broomsticks in the distance, too small to make out individually.

After the pies were in the oven and the stew was simmering away on the stovetop, they chopped vegetables for salad, roasted brussels sprouts in a pan, and mashed an entire cauldron of potatoes. Draco mixed a vat of Italian dressing and shredded lettuce with his bare hands. He made gravy from scratch. He learned to mix a different kind of dough for dinner rolls. It seemed like hours had gone by, and he suddenly realized how tired he was.

_Well done, Draco. You're halfway to becoming a house elf by now. Mother would be so pleased._

Finally, Mrs. Weasley stuck her head out the kitchen window and hollered for them all to come and set up the tables.

“It’s a bit chilly outside, but we’ll have to make do with warming charms. There’s too many of us to eat in the house.”

The back door burst open, and Ginny Weasley came running into the kitchen. She stopped dead when she saw Draco and whipped out her wand.

“Mum? What’s going on?”

“Ginny Weasley! Put that wand down! Draco is a guest in this house,” Mrs. Weasley barked.

“But _mum,_ it’s _Malfoy!_ ”

“Don’t bother, Gin. Mum’s adopted him. She’s already hung him a stocking and everything,” Charlie said, stomping in behind her. She looked from Draco, to Mrs. Weasley, to Charlie, and back again. Finally, she lowered her wand with a sigh.

Mrs. Weasley sat beside him, and poured him a glass of milk. He smiled to himself. No one had poured him a glass of milk since he was a little boy. Ginny and Charlie collected plates and cups and silverware and carried them outside to where the twins and Hermione Granger were setting up tables. Neville Longbottom was helping Luna Lovegood spread out tablecloths, and Dean Thomas was levitating pitchers of water onto the tables.

_Great. All of Gryffindor House is here._

And if they were all here, it was only a matter of time before _Potter_ showed up. The oath tugged at him, and he realized, with a burgeoning horror, that he would have to apologize to Potter. Suddenly, he missed Romania with a renewed vigor.

And once the thought of Potter struck him, it took hold of him until he could think of nothing else.

Mrs. Weasley was chatting kindly to him, asking after his favorite subject in school, and how he had done on his NEWTS, and whether he missed Quidditch much, and he was vaguely aware of answering her. But in his mind, memories of Potter played on a loop. Potter streaking past the dragon at the Triwizard tournament, Potter standing over him in the loo, as blood poured from his mangled chest, Potter leading Luna Lovegood by the hand at Slughorn’s party, Potter laughing with Granger and Weasley over breakfast in the Great Hall. Potter’s hand, reaching through an inferno, streaked with soot.

Potter would be here, under the same roof as him. Charlie had said “Ron and Harry’s room,” not “Ron’s room where Harry occasionally sleeps.” Potter half lived here. This was Potter’s family. He was sleeping in Potter’s home. The thought filled him with dread. Where was Potter now? Working late at the Aurory? Out at the pub with Weasley? Maybe he was on a long stakeout, Draco hoped. Or perhaps he had gone on vacation. The oath itched under his skin.

 _I know,_ he told it. _I know._

A few minutes later, dinner was assembled. Arthur Weasley turned up just as the last of the pies were being levitated to the table and sat beside Percy Weasley- _Percy, I suppose…I can’t keep calling them all Weasley-_ and Draco tried to slip into a spot between Charlie and Mrs. Weasley while they were all distracted by his arrival. This was, of course, futile, and he was immediately set upon by eleven pairs of eyes. One of the twins-he could never tell them apart- jumped up and whipped out his wand, but Ginny grabbed his sleeve and jerked him back down.

“Don’t bother, George. Mum’s adopted him.”

“That’s quite right,” snapped Mrs. Weasley at George. “Draco is our _guest,_ and I’ll thank the lot of you to stop waving your wands in his face every time you see him.”

“But _why,_ mum?” George asked, staring through narrowed eyes at Draco. “ _Why_ is he our guest?”

“Mind your manners, George. It’s impolite to talk in front people as though they aren’t there.”

While George glared, his twin looked back and forth between Draco and Charlie curiously.

“Chuckie,” Fred began, “when you said you’d taken an apprentice, you didn’t mean…”

“Yup,” said Charlie with a strained sort of cheer. “Meet Draco Malfoy, apprentice extraordinaire.”

Draco caught Charlie’s eye.

 _“Chuckie?”_ he mouthed, and Charlie kicked him under the table.

He sat, straight-backed, and resisted the urge to shift in his seat. He was suddenly aware of how ridiculous he must look, sitting beside Charlie, swimming in his borrowed clothes. He felt like a child who had snuck into his parents’ closet to play dress-up. He wished he were anywhere else; literally anywhere.

_The bottom of the Black Lake…the surface of the sun…_

“You do know what Charlie does for a living, right?” asked Fred.

“I’ve been working for him for a year now,” Draco said, forcing his voice to remain level. “I’m rather familiar by now.”

“Tell me about what it is you actually do on the reserve,” Mrs. Weasley says, turning to him. “Charlie’s always so evasive.”

Grateful for a safe topic of conversation, he launched into an explanation of the day-to-day operations at the reserve, explaining the process of feeding and exercising the captive dragons, treating minor injuries, cleaning stalls-

“Wait,” George cut in. “Charlie has you out there shoveling dragon dung? Charlie, can you take a picture for us? I just want to frame the image of Malfoy buried in shit and hang it on my wall-“

“Watch your language at the table, George Weasley!”

“Sorry, mum.”

Dinner passed uneventfully for some time, and with the lull in conversation came the pulling of the oath. He was surrounded by people who deserved an apology, and the feeling was beginning to make his skin crawl.

 _I know,_ he told it. _Just be patient. I’m not going to do it at the dinner table._

“Malfoy, could you pass the brussels sprouts,” Fred asked.

“Er-sure,” he replied. “Here.”

“Thanks, Malfoy. Here, you’re out of pumpkin juice.”

Fred leaned around Charlie and raised a pitcher to refill his glass.

“Wait! Draco, don’t touch that, dear,” Mrs. Weasley said. “That is the number one rule in this household- never eat or drink anything that you get from Fred or George.”

“Oh come on, mum! It’s just pumpkin juice. I was being polite!” Fred whined.

“Alright then, Fred Weasley. Why don’t you take a drink?”

“Oh, er…I’m not thirsty…”

“You heard me, Frederick. Drink the pumpkin juice.”

Fred looked over at his twin and gave a little shrug, then took a swig straight from the pitcher. There was a loud, immediate ‘pop,’ and his hair was replaced by a mass of writhing snakes. Draco yelped and scrambled sideways, but no one else at the table seemed alarmed.

“Wicked,” Dean Thomas exclaimed, walking over and sticking his hand straight into the snakes. “Are any of them poisonous?”

The snakes on Fred’s head dominated the rest of the conversation, and Draco was relieved not to be the center of attention. Ginny had befriended a Ball Python and was trying to convince Longbottom to stroke its scaly back, and Granger was quizzing both twins on what sort of charmwork they'd used to make the potion. By the time the meal was done, the majority of the snakes had slithered down from Fred’s head and disappeared, and everyone was clearing the table by magic. Ginny had kept her snake, and Longbottom, who'd come around in the end, was stroking it happily.

“What should I call him?” she asked.

“What about…Johnathan?” Longbottom offered.

“Not for a snake.”

“Timothy?”

“No.”

“OK…Wilbur.”

“Hmmm…Wilbur…it’s cute. What do you say, Wilbur?”

They made their way toward the field beyond the garden, and one by one, the rest of the family began to follow.

“We usually play Quidditch after dinner,” Charlie said. “We’ve got a pile of extra brooms…do you want to play?”

“Actually, I’m a bit tired,” Draco said, and he was. The force of holding back so many apologies had worn him out, and he wanted to get away from the lot of them.

“That’s all right then. Why don’t you turn in early? I’ll be down here for a while if you need me.”

“Right,” said Draco. “Thanks.”

He watched Charlie walk down to the field before turning back toward the Burrow. As he padded through the strangely quiet house, he stopped back in the den. Sure enough, there was a new stocking on the mantle, with “Draco” embroidered in gold thread, squeezed in between “Billy” and “Charlie.” He ran his fingers over it once, before heading up the stairs to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	16. Draco Malfoy and the Strange Runes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been working on this a lot this weekend because we're getting a lot of snow where I'm at right now, and I basically can't leave the house. So I'm just hanging out with my dog, drinking hot chocolate, and writing my fanfic. Overall, a pretty good weekend :)

When Draco awoke the next morning, it was to the sound of shouting, and one of the voices was Charlie.

_Charlie! Shit!_

He leapt out of bed, snatched his wand, and bolted down the three flights of stairs to the kitchen, where he found Charlie not in danger, but embroiled in a screaming row.

“-and you didn’t even TELL ME! My baby brother’s been _missing_ for _weeks-”_

“I OWLED YOU CHARLES! I OWLED THREE TIMES AND YOU DIDN’T OWL BACK!

“Yeah, and your letters neglected to mention ANYTHING ABOUT RONALD AND HARRY BEING MISSING!”

“YOU LOWER YOUR VOICE CHARLES WEASLEY! I couldn’t very well put that in a letter, _considering it’s illegal for me to even know!_ What was I supposed to write, Charles? Oh, hello dear, nice weather we’re having, and oh, by the way, Ronald and Harry have vanished and the Ministry’s covering it up-”

“You could have told me it was _important,_ mum! You could have told me you needed me to _come home!”_

“AND WOULD YOU HAVE DONE IT CHARLES? WOULD YOU HAVE COME HOME IF I’D ASKED?”

“That’s not fair, mum-”

“ _It’s perfectly fair!_ Remember when Percy had left, and Daddy was seconds away from being thrown into Azakaban, and Ginny was trapped at Hogwarts with a bunch of maniacs, AND NO ONE KNEW WHERE RONALD WAS because he went haring off on some SUICIDE MISSION, and our family was FALLING APART, CHARLES? DO YOU REMEMBER THAT? Because I do, and I remember that I begged you to come home.”

“You don’t understand, mum, I had to-”

“I understand well enough.”

Draco backed away slowly, and scrambled back towards the stairs, not wanting to be caught eavesdropping. Huddled on the first-floor landing were Granger and Ginny, pressed together, and an incensed-looking Percy, whose face was beet red. He darted past them back toward the bedroom, trying to ignore the shouts that followed.

_Ronald Weasley…Charlie’s brother…and Potter…_

Potter was missing…vanished. A deep discontentment roiled in his gut, and he tried not to think too much about the cause of it.

Moments later, Charlie barreled through the door and slammed it behind him.

“Apparently,” he said, staring at the floor, “Ronald and Harry have been missing, and no one in my family saw fit to tell me.”

“Er…I heard about that,” Draco said.

“Yeah, well…I suppose the whole house heard about it,” he said, sitting on the edge of his bed with a sigh. “From what mum said, they’ve been missing for two weeks and the Aurory doesn’t have a clue what happened to them.”

Then the door burst open again, and Ginny stormed in, a determined expression on her face.

 _“Don’t you know how to KNOCK?”_ Charlie barked, and her face fell.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she said, her eyes beginning to water. “But we really couldn’t put it in a letter.”

At the sight of her tears, Charlie’s face softened.

“Hey, Gin. I’m sorry. It’s OK,” he said, holding out his arms. She shut the door behind her, took two steps toward him, then flung herself into his chest, and he grabbed her and crushed her against him.

“I’m sorry, Gin. I didn’t mean to yell.”

She wrapped her arms around his broad chest and buried her head in his armpit.

“Mum didn’t mean that stuff, you know. She’s just really worried.”

“It’s fine, Gin. She didn’t say anything…that wasn’t true.”

Ginny peeled herself away from her brother and peered around the side of him at Draco, who was sitting awkwardly on Bill’s bed.

“How much do you trust him?” she asked, staring hard at Draco.

“I trust him, Ginny.”

“Fine,” she said, shooting Draco one last glare.

“The Ministry’s covering up Ron and Harry’s disappearance. They’re not really on a diplomatic mission in the United States.”

“I know, Gin. Mum already said-”

“But that’s not all,” she said, cutting him off. “They did get sent to investigate Death Eater activity in the towns around Lymington, but they didn’t disappear from Sway. They came back to the Burrow after they reported in. Mum sent them to the muggle grocer’s with Hermione’s bag to buy supplies for a camping trip, and they just never came back. We didn’t report that to the Aurory; as far as they know, Sway is the boys’ last known location”

“They disappeared from a grocery store?”

“Yes. Remus picked up threads of dark magic in the area and tracked them back to Sway. We’ve been scouting there, keeping lookout for Death Eaters. We think the boys were followed after their investigation, and they were ambushed at the muggle grocer's so they would be less able to defend themselves with magic.”

“Wait…Ginny, why are you involved in this? You and Remus need to report that to the Aurory-”

“We can’t. There may be a leak in the Aurory.”

“How do you know?”

“Because someone else got access to the classified report and showed up in Sway looking for them.”

“Who?”

“Severus Snape.”

“Snape?” Draco cut in.

“Yes,” she replied, glaring at him again. “We actually ran into each other and ended up running across a Death Eater cell. We had to duel our way out.”

“Oh my God, Ginny, what were you thinking? You can’t go mucking around in Ministry investigations…you could have been killed! And where the hell does Remus get off letting you-”

“ _Come off it, Charles,”_ Ginny snapped, sounding eerily reminiscent of Molly Weasley, and Charlie shut his mouth with a ‘snap.’

“Remus is a two-war veteran who’s forgotten more magic than you even know. Plus, we had Sirius and Luna helping us. I wasn’t in any danger, and in case you forgot, _I fought in the war._ I’m perfectly capable of defending myself.”

Charlie looked like he wanted to argue, but he held up his hands in surrender.

“We’ve all been working on it. Dad and Percy have been keeping their ears to the ground in the Ministry- the twins made some new Extendable Ears that let Dad keep tabs on what the Ministry’s official position is before they release it to the papers. Everyone at the Quibbler is running a misinformation campaign to keep the “diplomatic mission” thing going. Neville and Lavender are keeping their ears open at the Aurory, too.”

_Wait…Neville? As in Longbottom? And Lavender Brown, that squealing little harpy that used to follow Ron Weasley around? Are AURORS?!_

“Me and Remus have been switching off with Sirius and Luna investigating the sites where the Aurory reported Death Eater activity. Hermione’s been researching rune sequences we found at some of the sites. And now Snape’s turned up looking too, and I think he’s going to agree to help us. We could really use your help too.”

“Tell me what you need,” Charlie said gently, and she leaned back into him.

“Come back to Grimmauld Place,” she said. “Hermione’s already there working…I can fill you in on everything we know. And it might be good to give mum some space for now. She’s been trying to hold it together, Char, but she’s taken it the hardest…she just stands and stares at the clock all day.”

“You seem awfully cavalier about this,” Charlie said, looking down at her in concern.

“I’m not. I want to cry. I want them back. But…the clock’s been flipping between “traveling” and “mortal peril,” so we know they’re not dead. And they aren’t kids anymore. They’re qualified wizards and they’ve been in loads of bad situations and always come out in the end. We have to trust that they can take care of themselves until we find them. Mum knows that too, she’s just…”

“I know, Gin. It’s alright. You’ve been doing a great job, OK? And I’m gonna help you.”

Ginny tightened her grip on him.

“Give us a second to pack a trunk and we’ll go with you, OK?”

Ginny gave a watery nod and plopped on Charlie’s bed, rummaging under the pillows and pulling out a tattered, stuffed dragon, and hugging it tightly.

Draco’s trunk was already packed with the few items he had brought from the reserve, so he shrunk it and shoved it into his jeans pocket. Charlie shrunk his entire wardrobe and tossed it into his trunk, along with miscellaneous books, rolls of parchment, two different cauldrons, and several boxes of unlabeled jars and vials. Within minutes, his trunk was packed and shrunk, and Ginny was waiting expectantly.

“He’s not coming with us, is he?” Ginny asked unkindly, and Charlie crossed his arms.

“He’s my apprentice, Gin. He goes where I go.”

“Ugh.”

Privately, Draco felt the same. But he bit down on his retort for Charlie’s sake; the man had already had one row for the day.

“Don’t be ugly, Ginevra. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Don’t tell me what does and doesn’t suit me.”

They bickered for several minutes, pausing only long enough for Ginny to grab them both by the arm and apparate them. When they reappeared, it was in a kitchen, and the room seemed distantly familiar to Draco, but he couldn’t place it.

“You two stay here,” she said. “I’m going to get Hermione. She can help me fill you in. I might ask Snape if he would mind coming down, too.”

“Wait…Snape’s here?” Charlie said.

“Yes, he has to stay until he recovers. He got injured in the duel.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t dangerous, Ginny!”

“It wasn’t! Snape was hurt, not me!”

The bickering started back up, and reached such a volume that Granger came downstairs to investigate with her wand drawn.

“Oh! Charlie! And, uh…Draco. Hello to you too,” she said, looking back and forth between the two of them.

“Hello, er…Hermione,” Draco replied, trying out her first name and disliking the feel of it in his mouth.

“Right…,” she said, clearly as uncomfortable as he was.

He turned to Ginny.

“You said you were going to get Severus. I want to see him. Please.”

“You can’t,” Hermione cut in. “Sirius said he’s not to be disturbed right now. He tried to leave earlier and reinjured himself, and he’s meant to be in bed resting until tomorrow.”

“Is he alright?” Draco asked, trying his best to project an idle curiosity.

“Well, no. He’s not dying, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Draco let out the breath he was holding.

“But he’s not really OK. He had internal bleeding, and he keeps getting up and trying to do things.”

“Can we see him tomorrow?” Charlie asked, and Draco turned and looked at him, surprised.

“I suppose,” Hermione said. “But I doubt he’ll want to talk to you. He’s in a rather bad mood.”

“Oh, Snape’s always in a bad mood,” said Charlie. “I’ll go see him in the morning. I haven’t had the chance to catch up with him since I came to Hogwarts for the Triwizard tournament.”

“Oh, right then,” she said, looking at him strangely. “Anyway, I suppose Ginny’s told you everything.”

“Yes…and I’m a bit concerned that none of you have gone to the Aurory with that information. I want to find them too, but what you’re doing is illegal-”

“ _Don’t_ start that again, Charlie,” Ginny cut him off. “We’re not going to the Ministry. Either sit down and listen to Hermione and help us or bugger off.”

He glared at her, but threw himself into a chair at the kitchen table all the same. Draco sat beside him, and Ginny and Granger- _Hermione,_ he told himself- sat opposite them.

The table’s surface was piled with books and parchment, and Hermione unrolled a scroll in front of her and flattened it against the table.

“This is a rune sequence that Ginny and Remus uncovered just inside the forest in Sway. The problem is that the sequence appears to be completely random. The rune for love appears, then Earth, change, and vitality. This symbol isn’t even a rune- it’s a Sumerian symbol that means protection for travelers. But none of them are following any interpretable convention, so it’s impossible to figure out what they mean when read as a whole.”

“The symbol for bondage looks recurring,” Charlie said, peering at the paper.

“It is, but I can’t figure out why. To activate bondage, the symbol for bondage has to be connected to the object meant to be bound. These bondage symbols were just scattered across the sequence.”

“That’s not all,” Ginny cut in. “The rune sequence we found was bound to the Earth using Arkay’s Third Convention, and soil samples of the area turned up threads of dark magic.”

“They used Arkay?” Charlie asked. “Arkay’s Conventions are all for redirecting elemental magic…I forget the Third…”

“Arkay’s Third Convention is used to realign earth-based magic to the closest leyline associated with it. Primarily studied by those seeking to control powerful growth-based spells, the Third Convention draws on the energy of the leyline to subsume the will of the growing to the will of the caster by binding the energy of the caster to the energy contained within the leyline,” said Hermione, rattling off the definition verbatim from a textbook, and she sounded so much like Theo in that moment that Draco’s heart hurt.

“But what does that have to do with…” Charlie trailed off.

“We’re at a bit of a dead end with the rune translation,” Hermione said. “We did recover a sample of human blood, and Dean’s taken it to the muggle police department to have the DNA analyzed.”

“Deeinay?” asked Charlie, his head tilted to the side.

“D.N.A.,” Hermione repeated. “It’s…rather complicated, but basically, muggles have invented a way of identifying a person based on the chemicals found in their blood. They keep records of everyone they’ve ever arrested, and they can check the DNA in the blood against the records to try to find a match. Dean’s confunded the analysts at a crime lab in London- they think he’s a member of the muggle police, and he’s gotten them to analyze the blood sample, but we’re still waiting on the results.”

Draco personally thought this was mad, but he kept the sentiment to himself. If Potter’s best hope for a rescue depended on the questionable talents of Dean Thomas and a bunch of muggles mucking around with blood, well…

_What have you gotten yourself into now, Potter?_

He felt a sudden twist of fear, and he pushed it down, hard. Whatever Potter was doing right now was Potter’s own fault. 

“I might be able to help you,” Draco said, gesturing for the parchment, and Charlie pushed it towards him.

“I scored Outstanding with Honors in Runes when I went back and sat NEWTS,” he said, unable to resist the barb.

“Interesting,” said Hermione, narrowing her eyes at him. “You scored so high in Runes and yet you chose to pursue an apprenticeship in magizoology, which you have never shown either an interest nor an aptitude for.”

He felt his face heating.

“People change, Granger,” he snapped.

Abruptly, her face softened.

“I suppose you’re right,” she said.

"And anyway," he said quickly, "this isn’t the rune for bondage. It’s the rune for binding. Bondage has to happen to physical objects; if no two objects are specified in connection to the bondage, it will simply fail to activate. Binding will tether two intangible elements together, such as connecting vitality to spirit.”

“That’s not right,” she snapped back. “Physical bondage must always be represented by intersecting lines; you can see the acute angle in the symbol here. Oh, but…it’s intersecting with…two parallel lines…”

“Which are used to represent binding. Two objects parallel in an intangible plane,” he said slowly, as if talking to a small child.

“Wait,” Charlie said, and tugged the parchment from Draco’s hands. “They weren’t trying to bind two physical objects, and they weren’t trying to bind two intangible elements…”

Draco looked at Hermione and saw a flash of comprehension, and then he realized-

“They were trying to bind an intangible element to a physical object!”

“Yes!” Hermione cried. “This changes everything! We have to go upstairs to the library.”

Forgetting her previous hostility, she seized both Charlie and Draco by the arms and began dragging them bodily out of the kitchen.

“I’m going to go check in with Remus on the tracking progress,” Ginny said, watching Hermione with a wry smile.

“You lot seem to be onto something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	17. Charlie Weasley and the Midnight Visit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi folks. I feel like its been forever since I updated. I had to fly back home to do some family stuff, so I've been off my writing game, but here's a Charlie chapter to get things moving again. 
> 
> I've never read any fics with Charlie as the main character, and all we get about him in canon is that he left school early, made really good grades, was a star athlete, loved dragons, and was kind of a badass, so I'm having a harder time with him than anybody else just because I feel like I don't know him as well.
> 
> Anyway, I'm hoping to get back to more regular updates now. I've got some good ideas cooking :)

Charlie leaned back in his chair and stared into the fire. He had only been inside Grimmauld Place a few times, in the days after the war and before he left to return to Romania, and never in the library. He inhaled deeply, breathing in the smell of the old leather chair and burning wood and pipe tobacco and the hundreds upon hundreds of dusty old books. The Black family’s library rivaled that of Hogwarts, and it contained a massive collection of obscure, dark texts. It was like his childhood wet dream. God, he’d been such a nerd.

He smiled to himself. Draco and Hermione had both fallen asleep on a plush green sofa, books piled between them. One of Draco’s was still open on his lap.

He was glad to see the boy getting on with someone; he hadn’t really realized how much bad blood there was between his siblings and Draco had until he’d brought him to the Burrow.

He worried about the boy. He hardly seemed cut out for the kind of danger he was putting himself in as an Unthinkable. But there was something in the coldness in his eyes and the hard set of his mouth that Charlie understood. It was the look of someone who had no one to turn to. Charlie recognized that look. He’d worn it once, himself, before he found _her._

His breath caught in his throat at the stab of longing. The hardest part of missing someone was getting through the night, when everyone was asleep and there was nothing to do but think. He pulled her wand out of his pocket and twirled it between his fingers, and the little flickers of her familiar magic were cast adrift and almost _lonely_ without her. The wand missed her too.

_Gretel…you’d be giving me so much shit if you could see me right now._

She had been so powerful, so indomitable. He had never stopped to consider the possibility that she _could_ be killed. He had seen her bleed, had seen her cut up and bruised. He’d mended her torn skin and broken bones. But she’d taken the pain with a twisted little smile, as though she were mocking it for thinking it could slow her down.

So much of him was her, and he knew it- the confidence and bluster and swagger that he’d learned to project now felt like a coat that was too big for him. Without her, he felt exposed, like the mask of Gretel-toughness that he’d lived in for seven years had cracked and the awkward Billy’s-little-brother was showing underneath.

He could almost feel her fist balling into the collar of his shirt and dragging him down to eye level.

_“You think I’m gonna let you off the hook cause I’m dead? Like fuck. I had to drag your little punk ass around for seven years, now it’s your turn to put your big-girl pants on. So quit sniveling. You’ve got shit to do.”_

He snorted out loud and shook his head.

_Are you my conscience now? Or have I just fucking lost it?_

But the Greta-voice was right…he _did_ have shit to do. He needed to find Ron and Harry, hopefully quickly enough stop his baby sister from playing amateur detective. He was still a bit sore at Remus Lupin…the man had been Ginny’s teacher, and she clearly still considered him some sort of authority figure. Something about the idea of Lupin allowing his young, impressionable sister to get in the middle of an Auror investigation itched.

And then there was the matter of Draco. He had long since stopped being angry; the boy’s litany of apologies and mother-henning had been so pathetic it was sort of endearing. He knew he couldn’t keep neglecting Draco’s training, but…he remembered how he had struggled to grasp even the most basic of the Forms. Draco had talent in spades, but mastering the Forms required focus and perseverance and grit. Greta had taught him by throwing him into the thick of combat and forcing him to use the Forms or die. But Draco wasn’t willing to die. Teaching Draco was going to require another strategy. He turned it over in his mind for a while, watching the logs crackle in the library’s fireplace.

Suddenly he was aware of another presence in the room, and he whipped around.

“Charlie Weasley. It’s been a long time.”

That voice. Even after years, something in it sent a little thrill down his spine. He grinned broadly.

“Professor Snape,” he replied.

“I have been free of the burden of teaching for many years now. I’m hardly “Professor” any longer.”

“Er- Severus, then. I’m glad to see you’re OK. Ginny told me you were injured looking after her.”

“Yes, we… were caught quite off guard, the both of us. I did well to have her with me.”

“I’d like to hear about what happened if you feel up to the story,” Charlie said hopefully, eyeing the empty chair beside him, and Snape stepped into the light of the fire.

He had never seen Snape out of stuffy, formal robes that buttoned up to the chin, and he wasn’t quite prepared for the sight. He seemed taller without the robes, and still thin, but healthier than Charlie had ever remembered seeing him. The outline of his shoulders and chest was visible under a plain black t-shirt that was just barely on the tight side. There was a wicked scar on the side of his neck. His arms were not thickly-muscled like Charlie’s own, but toned, veins prominent beneath pale skin. The flat plane of his stomach narrowed to a V, and a pair of ripped blue jeans hung low around his hips.

_Damn…_

Charlie looked at the floor, trying not to stare.

_Oh my God, Charlie, get it together!_

There was a flash of black ink, and Charlie caught a glimpse of the Dark Mark. This surprised him momentarily, the same way it had when he first caught sight of Draco’s. Snape seemed to notice his gaze and crossed his arms over his chest, hiding it from view.

He eased himself into the chair beside Charlie and watched him for a moment, his dark eyes and thick lashes flickering in the firelight, a fathomless expression on his face. Charlie felt an old, awkward uncertainty creeping in on him. He opened his mouth to speak, but his throat was dry, and he had forgotten whatever it was that he had been saying a moment ago.

Mercifully, Snape broke the silence.

“It was rather unexpected to run into your sister in a farming village…a bit of an odd choice for a vacation.”

“I think it's pretty obvious she wasn’t on vacation,” Charlie said.

“Yes. I suspected as much,” Snape replied.

“I reckon she was there for the same reason you were,” Charlie said.

“Oh? And you’ve suddenly developed a talent for Divination?” Snape said silkily.

“You were looking for Harry and Ron,” Charlie said bluntly. “Ginny’s already told me everything.”

“Miss Weasley was mistaken. I was looking for Death Eaters. But finding your brother and Mr. Potter will very likely lead me to Death Eaters, so I suppose we do share a common goal.”

“Ginny said there were Death Eaters in the village. She said you protected her.”

“We ran across a cell of them in the New Forest outside the village of Sway. Your sister…Ginny. She heard them talking and tried to get close enough to hear. I followed her. We were both discovered shortly after that, and we had to duel our way out. We were well outnumbered, and it was lucky that we were able to apparate away before someone put wards up. I was…quite surprised at how well Miss Weasley conducted herself. She is remarkably skilled. I did protect her, yes. But she protected me as well.”

Charlie couldn’t help the glow of pride in his chest. Ginny had always been a little badass.

“I’m glad she had you with her. She’s tough, for sure. But she gets herself into shit…I wish she’d stay out of it altogether.”

“I spent my entire career teaching Weasleys,” said Snape drily. “You have no idea how often I echoed that sentiment.”

Charlie shot him a wry grin, and his heart beat a little faster at Snape’s tiny, answering smile.

Snape looked away suddenly, and his eyes fell on the bodies sleeping on the couch across from them.

“Is that… _Draco_?” Snape asked, dumbfounded.

“Oh, er, that's…yeah. Draco’s been helping us look into some rune translations that may have to do with the boys’ disappearance.”

“I see,” he replied, though judging by his expression, he clearly did not.

“He’s rather good with runes,” Charlie offered.

“Yes,” Snape said. “But as I was under the impression that young Mr. Malfoy was embroiled in a seven-year-long adolescent feud with Potter, Granger, all seven of the Weasley children, and the entirety of Gryffindor house, you’ll forgive me if I am at a loss as to _why_ he is here.”

“Not all of us,” Charlie said defensively. “Not all the Weasley children. I’ve never had a problem with him. Didn’t even know who he was until a year ago.”

Snape arched one eyebrow, and stared at Charlie in a silent invitation to go on.

“And he gets on with mum,” he said, shifting nervously under the imperious gaze. “She taught him how to bake a pie.”

“What I wouldn’t have given,” Snape said, expression blank, “to have witnessed that moment in person.”

“Well you can witness it next time we go to the Burrow, if you’d like to come for dinner,” Charlie said, blurting the words out in a rush. A little flash of surprise shifted across Snape’s face, and Charlie wasn’t sure if it was from the idea of Draco Malfoy baking or the thought of coming for dinner. He instantly regretted the invitation; the man would probably rather eat dinner with the giant squid than a pack of Weasleys.

“Am I to take it that Draco is a regular dinner guest?” Snape asked.

“Oh, well…yeah. He lives with us. Or with me, anyway. It’s part of his oath of apprenticeship,” Charlie said, omitting any mention of Draco’s fight with his mother. Snape seemed to be familiar with Draco, but he wasn’t exactly sure how familiar. Better to keep that information to himself.

Snape blinked at him.

“His oath. Of apprenticeship,” Snape said slowly. “To you.”

“Yes. I completed a dual mastery in magizoology and veterinary healing. I’ve taken Draco as an apprentice.”

Snape stared in silence for a full minute.

“Were you one of your brothers, I would be waiting for a punchline,” he said.

Charlie chuckled at him. “Why does everyone think I’m kidding? He really _is_ my apprentice. He’s quite good, too. We worked on the reserve for a full year and he didn’t take a single burn.”

“Of course,” Snape said, eyeing Charlie. His gaze was suddenly wary, and the change left Charlie with a cold feeling.

Then there was a rustling sound, and a little gasp, and Hermione Granger jerked upright so hard she fell off the sofa. Beneath the haze of sleep, there was fear in her eyes. She was looking at Snape, Charlie realized, and he was looking back, his face drawn, lips in a tight line.

“Hermione,” Charlie said gently. “Hey…it was just a dream.”

He scooted off of his chair and eased himself down onto the cold wood floor beside her.

“You alright?” he asked.

But her gaze was fixed over his shoulder. Charlie turned, but Snape was gone. He could just make out the shape of him disappearing through the doorway.

“Hermione?” he asked again.

Finally, she turned to him.

“Sorry,” she said. “I must have dozed off.”

Her gaze was still slightly unfocused. He stood and offered her a hand, and hauled her to her feet, wrapping an arm around her waist as she swayed slightly.

“What time is it?” she asked.

He glanced at a heavy, carved-wood clock on the wall.

“About two in the morning. Why don’t you go to bed and we’ll start on this again in the morning? You’re dead on your feet,” he said.

She nodded, then glanced at Draco.

“There’s loads of spare rooms here, but most of them still haven’t been cleared out yet…Ginny put Snape in Dean’s room while he recovers, so the only empty room is Neville’s- he’s working a night shift tonight,” she said.

“We can sleep in there,” Charlie assured her. “I’ll transfigure us a bunk bed for the night, and we’ll worry about cleaning out our own rooms in the morning.”

“Oi! Draco!” Charlie called. Draco groaned and threw his arm over his face, and Charlie walked over and rubbed his shoulder.

“Come on sleeping beauty,” he said, smiling at the sight of Draco blinking sleepily up at him. “You fell asleep reading, you great nerd.”

Draco smiled back, warm and unguarded, and it made Charlie’s heart warm.

_Awww. The little sleepy-head._

The boy stumbled to his feet, and they both followed Hermione out of the library, back down to the second floor, and down a series of halls, until they reached a closed door.

“There’s sconces on the wall if you need light,” she said. “The closest bathroom is the third door down from this one, on the right. There’s spare blankets and things in the cedar chest at the foot of the bed-”

“We’ll be fine,” Charlie said gently. “We’ll find everything. Go get some rest.”

“Right,” she said, yawning. “’Night Charlie. ‘Night Draco.”

“Goodnight er…Hermione,” Draco replied, and Charlie smiled to himself at the awkwardness.

_At least they’re on speaking terms._

He shooed Draco into the room, and lit the tip of his wand, not bothering with the sconces.

Draco crawled into the bed, dragged the cover over himself, and rolled over.

“Draco. I can’t transfigure the bed with you laying in it.”

Draco grunted.

“Fine,” he replied, kicking off his boots and rolling into bed beside the boy. “But don’t complain if I snore in your ear.”

He settled under the covers and rolled over so his back was against Draco’s, the way he used to sleep as a kid, when Percy would wake up in the night scared of the dark and crawl into his bed. He smiled at the memory, and let himself begin to drift.

They would be fine. They were going to find the boys, and he was going to start Draco's training again. Everything was going to be fine. He fell asleep contented and warm and with the feeling that all would soon be right in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	18. Remus Lupin and the Night-Blooming Wisteria

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again. I'm back with another chapter. The snow where I am is finally starting to melt a bit, and it was super sunny out so my dog and I went buck wild at the park then came home and crawled under a blanket and wrote fanfic all day. He's a good helper. He keeps my feet warm.
> 
> So last chapter Charlie and Severus finally reunite. Charlie's going through some shit, grieving his best friend, not completely sure how to be a good mentor to Draco, and worrying about Ron and Harry, and to complicate matters, he discovers he's not quite over his silly childhood crush on his old potions teacher. They'll get another chapter soon, but first we have Remus with some backstory and another Draco chapter coming up.

The air was cold enough to see his breath as he walked through a long patch of springy moss. The early-morning dampness had started to freeze, and Remus was quite grateful to Molly Weasley, who’d just knitted him a new pair of socks. It was a silly thing, but he loved cold weather just for the feeling of being warm inside his clothes, or underneath a blanket, or in front of a fire.

He spent most of his early mornings walking through the Forbidden Forest, waiting for Sirius and Luna and Ginny to finish their physical training. In a way, this place was just as much his home as Hogwarts had been. He peeled off his boots and socks, shrank them, and shoved them into his coat pocket. He wiggled his toes against the damp earth and felt them begin to turn numb with the cold. Sometimes when he came here, he followed the old paths through the forest, paths he remembered only vaguely, and through different eyes. Paths that he had once run with a stag, and a dog, and a rat.

Now, however, he walked at random, ignoring the buzz of his thoughts and focusing on the feeling of magic in the forest. It snagged against his own magic, jumbled and interwoven. He reached out with his magic and began to pick at the knot, to separate the tangle of energy into individual threads. The moss had an aliveness, and the trees, and vines, and all the leaves, and the roots beneath the earth. The birds roosting in the branches. The pack of true wolves that ran the old paths. Hawks, and hares, and field mice. Beetles crawling beneath rotting logs. Earthworms burrowing into the ground.

And the magic of the earth itself. He reached for it and felt it reach back, the ancient power strange against him. It pooled around him, as though greeting a favorite, lost pet that had come home.

Another thread brushed against him, this one familiar- Ginny. She was getting rather good at tracking him, he thought, pleased. She would come crashing through the brush any minute now. He smiled fondly at the thought. They were still working on the stealth part of her training.

He wondered about her, sometimes, about what the vibrant, lovely woman, a war hero and famous Quidditch star, could possibly want from a life like this. He had no regrets about the Unthinkables. But he also had no illusions about why he had been chosen. Ginny was different…she was smart, and strong, and he was tremendously proud of her, but she was still just a girl. Barely older than a child. He wondered how the Chief had found her, but more than that, he wondered why.

*************************************************************************************

_He passed through the main floor lobby of St. Mungo’s hospital as quickly as he could without drawing attention to himself. He had forced himself to make the trip, hating the place but desperate to know if the kids would be alright. His students…so many of them had ended up here. And some of them would never leave. The door to the chapel was unmarked, and judging from the layers of dust, seldom saw visitors. He had found it by accident once, stumbling exhaustedly through the door after keeping vigil during the first war._

_He twisted the old brass knob and slipped inside, letting out a breath as it closed behind him, glad to be out of the hospital lobby. He had been turned away from the place enough times, desperate and bleeding, that he would never not hate being seen there. The old, wooden stairs groaned beneath him as he descended the steps toward the flickering light of the chapel._

_The room was small, with low benches along each wall. In front of the benches were raised tables, with rows and rows of candles. The chapel was empty, but a few were still burning. And one candle, in the furthest corner of the room, had been burning since the summer of 1982, the year he had lost his whole heart in a single night. His grief had been its own magic then. That candle, he knew, would never go out._

_He shook away the memory as he slid onto the edge of the bench nearest him. He thought of the hours after the battle for Hogwarts, of the children that had come home to fight, and of those that remained, tiny in death. He picked up a candle and summoned their faces in his mind._

_“Ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it,” he said aloud, pulling a box of matches from his trouser pocket and lighting the candle’s dusty wick._

_“Go with God, and may God receive you,” he said, striking another match, lighting another candle. “Go with God, and may God receive you. Go with God, and may God receive you-”_

_There was the sound of shuffling feet, and he started, dropping his match. He snuffed the tiny flame beneath his boot and drew another from the box. Beside him, a wizened old woman wrapped in a dark purple shawl stooped over to the bench and plopped beside him, reaching for a votive. He struck the match. “Go with God, and may God receive you,” he started again. The woman leaned close to him and blew out his match._

_“Remus Lupin,” she croaked. “Top of his class at Hogwarts. Outstanding on all his NEWTS. A war hero, they say.”_

_He blinked at her, confused._

_“I’m sorry, ma’am, but have we…met?” he asked politely. The feeling of danger tugged at his awareness._

_“Oh, don’t mind an old woman,” she said. “I’ve not much to do in my retirement. You’ll have to forgive me a bit of gossip.”_

_“No trouble, ma’am,” he said, inclining his head politely as he rose to leave. “A pleasure to meet you.”_

_“Oh, but you’re not quite finished, are you?” she asked, a toothless smile twisting her face._

_A cold chill ran through him._

_“Excuse me?” he asked._

_“You haven’t finished. It won’t do. We mustn’t fail to honor the dead,” she said, lifting a candle and lighting it with a snap of her fingers. “Don’t mind an old woman. Sit back down and pay your respects.”_

_She held out a candle to him, and he looked down to find his hands shaking. He took it, lit it, and set it back on the table. She watched him curiously._

_“Who could it be for, I wonder? James Potter, perhaps? Or poor, sweet Lily? One of your housemates, stolen from you too early? Or is it for Pettigrew, the traitor, who you can’t help but hate and love in equal measure?”_

_“I’m sorry,” he snapped, backing away from her, “but that’s really none of your-”_

_“Or maybe one of the children, hm? So many brave little children. Too many to protect. You’ll need to light a lot of candles, Mr. Lupin.”_

_In the pit of him, his anger roiled around with his fear. He took another step back, glancing quickly over his shoulder for the stairs. He turned back, and found the old woman standing right in front of him, centimeters away. He stumbled backwards, reaching for his wand._

_“But you saved one little girl, didn’t you? She almost made a warm meal for Fenrir Greyback, but you ripped him apart, you did. Ripped him apart with your bare hands.”_

_He stepped back again. His heels hit the bottom step. His wand was shaking in his hand._

_“There’s a monster inside you, Remus Lupin,” she said._

_“Who are you?” he choked._

_“But you’re hardly special, are you?” she asked, ignoring him. “Did you think you were the only one? Don’t fool yourself, boy,” she spat. “You’ve always been one monster in a den of monsters.”_

_She stepped forward, and her hand flashed out and grabbed his hand. She pressed a small, sealed scroll into his palm, and pushed his fingers closed around it._

_“After all,” she said, smiling coldly, “It takes a monster to fight monstrosity.”_

_Then she turned on her heel and disapparated._

_*************************************************************************************_

The scroll had been a recruiting letter for the Unthinkables, a classified branch of the Department of Mysteries, and it had been both irritatingly vague and also cursed. It had burst into flames the second he finished reading it, and any attempt he made to discuss the letter’s contents resulted in him forcibly shrieking all the soprano lines from Verdi’s La Traviata and deeply confusing everyone around him, until he gave up entirely. The letter had told him only that he would be completing a practical examination and that he was required to arrive at the Department of Mysteries under polyjuice at 6 AM sharp the next morning and request to speak to the Chief Misinformation Officer.

Remus had spent the night rolling over in bed, wishing he could tell Sirius. It had turned out that he wouldn’t have to keep the secret long at all.

*************************************************************************************

_When he arrived at the Department of Mysteries, polyjuiced as a middle-aged muggle truck driver whose hair he had recovered in a petrol station restroom, the building was empty. He stood in the doorway a moment, looking around in confusion, then crossed the room to sit in a hard, straight-backed chair. The room was silent, save for a clock ticking, and though he tended not to mind silence, something about it unsettled him. There was the same tug of awareness- danger, his mind warned-and he thought of the old woman in the chapel. He looked around wildly but found himself still to be alone. He gripped his wand but didn’t draw it, reaching out with his magic and feeling the shapes of the objects in the room, searching for something that didn’t belong, until-he felt a thin strand of a strange magic. He followed the strand until he ran into the shape of its owner, perched at the vacant desk in the center of the room. The magic was oily against his own. It was the old woman from the chapel._

_“I know you’re there,” he said, whipping out his wand. “Illusio!”_

_The figure that blurred back into being was not that of the old woman, but of a stocky, ruddy-faced man, whose Weasley-red hair was cut in a close buzz._

_“Nicely done, Mr…?” the man said inquiringly._

_“I’m afraid I can’t provide any identifying details,” Remus said. “I’m looking for the Chief Misinformation Officer.”_

_The man grinned. He was clearly the same person who had been the old woman in the chapel, but where she had been strange and somehow predatory, this man seemed to have the disposition of a friendly cousin._

_“Good to hear it. From here on out, your designation is Sundance. Only a few folks here even know our department exists, and it’s in everyone’s best interest to keep it that way. You don’t let it out of the bag, and you don’t let anyone with the Unthinkables know who you are. Even me.”_

_“Excuse me,” Remus said, cocking his head in confusion. “But you were the one who recruited me. You already know who I am.”_

_“Not anymore I don’t.”_

_“I don’t follow.”_

_“Obliviated myself. Don’t know who you are, don’t want to know, don’t care.”_

_“I’m sorry, but you…what?”_

_“I obliviated myself,” the man repeated slowly._

_“It’s impossible for a person to obliviate themself. It violates Jorgensen’s Principle of-”_

_“I’ve found in my life,” the man cut him off, “that many of the things people say are impossible are actually just very hard. If you’re stubborn enough, you can figure out all kinds of things that are supposed to be impossible.”_

_“Anyway,” the man went on, “you’ll need to complete a two-part practical examination, after which point you will either fail, and I’ll Obliviate you and send you on your way, or you’ll pass and be assigned a partner. Last few years hit our department hard, though. War took almost the whole force. Depending on how you fare in your examinations, I may give you an apprentice instead of a partner.”_

_“There isn’t an option to work alone?” Remus asked._

_“Not typically. Job’s too dangerous to work alone.”_

_“I see,” Remus said. This wasn’t good news; if he had a partner, it would only be a matter of time before they found out about his lycanthropy._

_“You don’t sound happy about it,” the man remarked._

_“I thought we were to keep our identities confidential,” Remus replied._

_“Not from your partner. You spend too much time together. Can’t stay under polyjuice forever.”_

_“So…we know who our partners are, but not any of the other Unspeakables. And you don’t know who any of us are. That seems…problematic.”_

_The man chuckled to himself._

_“It’s like this, Sundance. We’re not Aurors, OK? We’re not part of Magical Law Enforcement, even though our cases do sometimes overlap. We don’t hunt criminals. We hunt the unexplainable. We end up balls deep into the kind of magic that woulda made Voldemort blush.”_

_He paused, rocked back on his heels, and folded his arms behind his head._

_“Think about a man like Cornelius Fudge. A weak-willed man of barely-average talent, who had an undeserved amount of power and who was willing to participate in evil to keep that power. If he knew our identities, he could manipulate us. Go after us, go after our families. In this field, you learn shit you don’t even really want to know…the kind of shit that can hurt people. That’s why we keep it quiet.”_

_“So then, after you go to such lengths to keep our identities confidential, what’s to stop the Unspeakables themselves from using that knowledge? What happens if someone turns out to be some kind of megalomaniac?”_

_“Then I kill them,” the man replied easily, smirking at Remus’ alarmed expression._

_“It’s like I said; we’re not Aurors. We do whatever’s necessary to close our cases. You turn out to be some kind of psychopath, Sundance, and I’ll hunt you down and kill you in cold blood and leave you for the birds to pick your corpse.”_

_“Uh…right,” Remus replied. “Duly noted.”_

_“Now, if we’re done with hypotheticals, you have an exam to complete. The first part of your practical is meant to gauge your ability in a combat situation.”_

_He stretched and began to cross the room, and Remus followed him, watching uncertainly as the man began prodding the wall with his wand at random._

_“Oh, where is it…here we are!” he said. He tapped the wall with the tip of his wand, and a door appeared. He turned the knob and opened the door to reveal a dingy alley in what looked to be an industrial part of London. He grabbed Remus by the arm and hauled him through, and the door disappeared behind him with a ‘pop.’_

_“Soon we’re going to duel, which means I’m going to attack you. But before we do that…you’ll have to catch me!” he said with a grin. Before Remus could so much as blink, the man disapparated._

_“Oh well…nothing else for it,” Remus muttered to himself, and reached out with his magic._

_It didn’t take long to find the man. Remus was well-practiced at tracking; as the unofficial mediator of a group of equally dramatic teenage boys, it had fallen on him to hunt them down each in turn- He had learned to pick up the traces of their magic, even among the twisted chaos of the castle. James’ magic was so much like flying that Remus could identify it by the dizzying feeling he got every time someone dragged him onto a broom. Peter’s magic was warm, like stretching out on the hearth rug in front of the common room fire. And Sirius- Sirius’ magic was sweet and lonely and curious and it seemed to just reach for him, and he could have found Sirius’ magic from across the earth, or at the bottom of the sea._

_He could find them anywhere, and not just them, he discovered, but others as well. He picked up the glint of a woodcutter’s axe in Professor McGonagall, the scent of lavender perfume in Lily Evans, the salty tang of the ocean in Gideon and Fabian Prewett. Marlene McKinnon’s magic felt like being plunged into ice water when she was angry and a chilly autumn morning when she was calm. Mary MacDonald’s had the sound of bare feet padding across a hardwood floor. Frank Longbottom’s smelled like tangerines and the smell of ozone after a rainstorm. He found that he could even track people he barely knew, feeling for shapes and impressions._

_After a few minutes of reaching, he found the oily strangeness and followed it, jogging from the alley and wading out into the crowded London streets. He followed it several blocks to a nearby café, and slipped into a booth beside the man, who was now a petite, long-faced woman in a flower-patterned dress._

_“Well that was faster than I expected,” she said, her nasally voice impressed. “That might be a record. Stay here a moment. I’ll get us a cup of tea to go.”_

_When she returned, she was the man again, and he was handing Remus a steaming Styrofoam cup. Remus took it with a polite smile, and followed the man out of the café and back down the street, sipping his tea in silence. They slipped down an alley, and the man vanished their cups with a flick of his wand, and began tapping on a brick wall._

_The door reappeared, and Remus followed him through it. They ended up not back in the Department of Mysteries’ lobby, but in what appeared to be an empty gymnasium with a dirt floor. There were rows of bleachers along either side of the room and an empty concession booth, complete with a soda fountain and popcorn machine._

_“Now we’re going to duel. You can aim to maim, injure, or torture, but obviously, no killing curses. Your goal is to try to disable me, but if you want my advice, you’d be better off just trying to defend yourself.”_

_Remus nodded uncertainly, following the man into the center of the room and turning to face him._

_“Alright, Sundance. I’m going to attack you now.”_

_“Right,” Remus replied._

_“Draw your wand, and…begin!”_

_The moment the word was out of the man’s mouth, Remus threw up a shield and sent a stunning spell through it. The man didn’t bother with a shield, flicking the stunner away lazily with his wand and circling Remus with a grin. Another flick and Remus’ shield shattered, and a jet of red light split into three streams. He jumped back and found that the streams split and redirected to follow him. He pushed a dispel out into the air around him and watched the streams fizzle as they collided with it. The man was hurtling balls of flame at him in rapid-fire succession as he circled, and Remus’ wand hand flew in wild arcs, cutting them down. He felt for the magic in the earth beneath him, reshaping it, and with a heave, he pulled up a thick sheath of stone in front of him just in time to block a bleacher bench that the man had sent hurtling at his face. The wood shattered as it bounced off the stone._

_Remus snapped his fingers and the wall disintegrated into shards of rubble, falling to the ground just in time to reveal the man running straight at him, a bludgeoning hex spilling from the tip of his wand. Remus lifted his hand, flat palm up, and the shards rose and flew at the man just as he let the hex fly. Unable to drop the hex and shield himself, he took the full force of them, staggering backward under the rain of sharp stones._

_He emerged angry, covered in bruises and bleeding from dozens of shallow cuts. His wand tip glowed, and he charged again, forcing Remus on the defensive. The man began to toss hexes in quick succession, charging forward with each offensive, and Remus was only just managing to drop them in time to avoid the hits, when he felt his back hit the gymnasium wall. His mind flashed back to the old woman backing him up across the chapel. “Danger,” his mind growled at him. The man grinned and charged again, and Remus leaped to the side, flicking a transfiguration at the ground below him. Thin fingers of rock rose from the earth and snatched at the man, but he demolished them lazily. Another hand shot up, but closed its fingers around air as he darted easily to the side._

_The duel went on for what seemed like hours, and Remus threw spells, stones, chunks of earth, bleachers, and pieces of wall, but couldn’t manage to land anything more than a glancing blow, and the man fared no better._

_Finally, the man stopped and regarded Remus, twirling his wand between his fingers._

_“Not bad, Sundance,” he said. “Been a good long time since anyone’s even made me break a sweat. But let’s finish this up, shall we?”_

_He brandished his wand in a complicated pattern, and the space around him began to glow a slight blue. Remus readied himself, throwing up a shield, but when the man sliced his wand through the air, nothing appeared to happen, until Remus realized he couldn’t breathe. Or he could, rather, but there was no air around him to breathe in. The man’s spells began to batter against his shield. He pushed a dispel out into the space around him, and when nothing happened, he began to panic. His shield flickered, and the tail end of a cutting curse sliced across his shoulder. He forced the shield back up just in time to deflect a jet of red light. The man was advancing toward him. Remus fought the urge to clutch at his throat._

_If a dispel had failed, that could only mean…the man had vanished the air? But he couldn’t have vanished all of it, or he wouldn’t be able to breathe either. The spell must be limited to a space around him. He pushed his magic out, feeling with it. His shield shattered, and he leaped aside to avoid another cutting curse. Finally, he found the edge of the man’s spell and slammed his own magic against it. He felt it crack, and the air rushed back in._

_The man’s face betrayed only a flicker of surprise, and then he was slinging back-to-back hexes again. He began to circle Remus, looking for an opening, and Remus faced him warily. Then, the tip of his wand glowed white, and he…disappeared? Remus pushed his magic out and felt the shape of the man barreling straight at him. He gathered his magic and pushed, and the man flew backward._

_“Petrificus Totalis!” he barked, and the spell hit the flying shape dead-on. The disillusionment broke, and the man’s stone-still form fell to the ground._

_“I believe I’ve incapacitated you, sir,” Remus said._

_He freed him from the body-bind, and the man began laughing._

_“Well fuck me sideways,” he said. “I can count on my fingers the number of times I’ve ever lost an examination duel. Well fucking done, Sundance.”_

_“Thank you, sir.”_

_The man roared with laughter._

_“Good God…just call me Chief. Everyone does. And what in the hell makes you think I’m a sir?”_

_Remus paused, unsure of how to respond._

_“Don’t assume anything about anyone. And don’t use identifying details. I’m “Chief.” Not “ma’am,” not “sir.”_

_“I understand. Thank you,” Remus replied._

_“Right,” said the Chief, dusting himself off and stretching, the friendly expression back on his face. “Time for the last part of your exam.”_

_They made their way through another door in the wall, which opened up to a train yard. Remus followed the Chief apprehensively. They walked through the yard in silence, then began to follow a set of tracks for some time, until they reached a fork and stopped. Remus squinted into the distance and saw something moving further up along the tracks._

_“Chief?” Remus looked over at the man, who was picking at a hangnail._

_“Chief! There’s something on the tracks!”_

_The man smiled, not bothering to look up. Remus felt cold. Behind him, somewhere in the distance, he could hear a train groaning. He took off at a sprint. As he ran, the moving shapes became clearer- they were people, bound and thrashing._

_“Arresto,” cried the Chief’s voice from behind._

_Remus struggled uselessly against the spell, locked in place as the train grew louder._

_“Consider this long-standing problem in ethical philosophy,” said the Chief, who was watching Remus with his arms crossed, rocking on the balls of his heels. “A runaway train is hurtling down a track, headed straight toward five incapacitated people. Next to the track is a lever, that if pulled, will shift the track to the right, redirecting the train and saving the five people. However, on that second track is a single person, also incapacitated. You must either do nothing, and allow the five people to die, or redirect the train and sacrifice the single person in their place.”_

_Remus could see the front grate of the train now. A cloud of dust and smoke was billowing behind it. The Chief dropped his spell, and Remus whipped around, raising his wand to stop the train, or vanish it. But as the spell formed on his lips, he felt his wand ripped from his hand._

_The Chief held Remus’ wand loosely, twirling it between his fingers._

_“Nuh-uh. No cheating. Choose.”_

_Remus’ eyes flicked from the lever to the figures struggling on the tracks._

_“What will it be, Mr. Sundance? Will you sacrifice one life in exchange for the five?”_

_Remus looked at the lone figure. The body had fallen still, as though resigned to the inevitable._

_“Don’t hesitate Sundance, you don’t have much time. It’s one man’s life for the greater good. Choose.”_

_The train is close enough now that Remus can feel the vibration of its rumbling ascent. He has just enough time to make it to the lever. He breaks into a sprint, and runs past it, straight onto the tracks. The train is barreling towards them, and Remus knows he won’t make it to the bodies in time to free all of them. He turns and faces the train as it bears down on them. He can feel the earth below him, and he reaches for it, pushing and twisting, straining against its shape. He pours his magic into a spell, willing the earth to bend to him. The air around him ripples with the force of it. Then, the ground beneath the train opens up, and he hears the scream of twisting metal as the cars disappear into the black maw of the earth, and the gaping chasm closes. Remus turns to the Chief, watching him coldly as he walks over and presses Remus’ wand back into his hand. The Chief snaps his fingers, and the bodies flicker, and turn into a pile of stones. An illusion...of course. Remus felt his cheeks heat in embarrassment._

_“An impressive display,” said the man jovially, as though discussing a bit of odd weather with a friend in a pub. “But you do realize that, had this been anything other than a fabricated scenario, you would have killed every man, woman, and child on that train in your determination to save those on the tracks.”_

_He blinks at the Chief, struck by a sudden wave of nausea, but the man seems unconcerned. He grabs Remus’ arm and apparates them._

_When they reappear, they are in a rather large office, made much smaller by the literal mountains of file folders, piled floor to ceiling and stacked on every flat surface. The Chief perches himself on the corner of the desk, steadying a stack of files that wobbles precariously beside him._

_“Well, Sundance, you made it through exams. You have the night to consider the offer; you’ll need to owl me a reply by tomorrow morning. If you accept the position, you’ll be assigned an apprentice as soon as we finish screening the rest of the recruits.”_

_“I don’t need to consider it,” Remus replied quickly. “I accept the position. But I have to discuss something with you. About the apprentice- I don’t think I’m the best candidate to train someone.”_

_“Oh?” replied the Chief. “And why’s that?”_

_Remus paused, unsure of how to continue. If he had to train an apprentice, there was no way he would be able to keep his condition a secret forever. What would happen when they found out? Would the Chief fire him? He wasn’t even supposed to be eligible for a Ministry job. It was best to be upfront about it, he decided._

_“Well?” asked the Chief, quirking an eyebrow._

_“I’m a werewolf,” Remus blurted. “I don’t think I’ll be able to-”_

_“SHUT IT, you complete IDIOT!” the Chief barked._

_Remus’ mouth clicked shut. The Chief slid off the desk and stomped toward him, crowding him, leaning in close enough that his lips were just level with Remus’ ear._

_“You listen to me good, because I will not repeat myself,” he said in a low growl. “I don’t care if you’re actually three owls in a trench coat. Do not reveal identifying information to me.”_

_The man turned away and sighed. “Damn it. Now I’m going to have to Obliviate myself. I hate Obliviating myself.”_

_“I’m…uh…”_

_“Stop stuttering, Sundance. You’ll receive a letter confirming your appointment to the department with a date and time to return and collect your apprentice. Don’t go around biting your apprentice and you’ll be fine. I’ll let you see yourself out. If you happen to see anyone waiting in the lobby, send them on in. That’ll be the next recruit waiting to sit exams.”_

_“Uh…right,” Remus replied, hastening for the door. “Until then,” he said, inclining his head._

_“Until then, Sundance,” the Chief replied with a jaunty little wave._

_Remus was rather glad when he closed the door behind him. And sure enough, when he stepped back out into the Department of Mysteries lobby, there was a short, rather plump old woman wearing a brightly floral sundress._

_“Excuse me, ma’am, but if you’re looking for the Chief Misinformation Officer, he’s right inside this office waiting for you,” he said, and the woman turned to look at him, and the woman, Remus realized, was-_

_“Padfoot?”_

_“Moony? Is that you?”_

_“Yeah, but don’t say anything. Act like you don’t know me. We’ll talk at home.”_

_“Uh…right.”_

_He scrambled through the door before he could do something stupid, like kiss Sirius in front of God and everybody. As he hastened through the Ministry building and out into the streets of London, he felt weight lift off his shoulders. Remus laughed to himself and shook his head. Of course it would be Sirius. Of course it would._

_*************************************************************************************_

Remus was pulled from his reverie by the telltale sound of Ginny stomping through the bushes.

“Found you!” she crowed, racing over.

“Yes, and now the whole rest of the forest knows where I am too,” he said, shaking his head at her fondly.

“Whoops,” she replied, unabashed.

She stopped in front of him.

“I can’t believe you’re out here barefoot. It’s freezing.”

“It helps me concentrate. Which is what you’re going to be doing in a minute. How was PT?”

“Not bad. Sirius made us take turns running up the side of the bluff carrying giant rocks and I fell and broke my ankle, but he fixed it for me.”

“Sirius is mad,” he informed her, rolling his eyes. Sirius had thrown himself into physical training somewhat obsessively, and Ginny joined him with the same sort of demented glee.

“What are we doing?” she asked, pulling her shoes and socks off.

“Today we’re working on locating vitalities,” he told her, smiling as she plopped down on the cold ground and looked up at him. He eased down beside her, wincing as his joints cracked. She scooted closer, huddling beside him for warmth, and he peeled off his coat, wrapping it around her. One side-effect of the werewolf metabolism was that he ran several degrees hotter than a normal person. As long as he kept himself fed, he was seldom bothered by cold.

“Every living thing has a kind of energy, a vitality associated with life,” he began.

“Is the energy magic?”

“Sort of. Energy is energy. Magic is simply a certain kind of energy, which is associated with the will of its wielder. Vitality is the energy associated with life,” he began again. “Every living thing in this forest will have a thread of it. Since the lives of the plants and animals in the forest are deeply intertwined, so will their energies be. But if you focus, you can reach for them, and feel the differences in the threads of their vitalities. Identifying the individual threads is the first step in understanding and wielding their magic.”

“Wielding their magic?” she said questioningly.

“Yes. Look.”

He pressed his palm against the earth and let his magic pull against the magic of the earth. He lifted his palm, and a single, wispy vine burst from the soil and rose slowly towards him.

“There is a vitality, a life force, within all living things. When you reach out to it with your magic, you can direct it. It will take shape according to your will. But you have to understand it first. The magic of the earth and of growing things is a kind of elemental magic. Elemental magic is very difficult to control because it is magic in its most basic form. It already knows what shape it is meant to be, and it knows what its purpose is. You can direct its shape and purpose with your magic, but it takes a great deal of skill. The earth and all that grows from it will not change their shape lightly.”

“Isn’t it…wrong?” she asked, her blue eyes uncertain. “To try to control something else that’s alive?”

He is stunned into silence for a moment, his chest suddenly bursting with pride.

“That you have enough forethought and respect to ask that question means that you’re halfway to understanding,” he says gently.

“Earth magic is governed by a symbiosis between life and death. When you use your own magic to direct the vitality of this plant,” he said, gesturing at the vine, which had now begun to sprout tiny, green buds, “you are directing a life force, not a soul. When you alter it to your will, you are simply changing its shape and purpose, in the same way that man changes the shape and purpose of water in a river by redirecting it with a dam. Simply put, the growth is alive, but it is not aware. When it dies, its matter returns to the earth and the earth breaks it apart to use again.”

“So when you make something grow, you’re not enslaving it, you’re just…reshaping it. Because it doesn’t have a will.”

“Yes, essentially.”

“What do you mean by a “symbiosis between life and death?”

“That’s a big question,” he said, tilting his head back and looking up at the darkness just beginning to fade into morning. “The earth is the origin of the cycle between life and death. Plants grow from the earth to feed the animals in the forest. When the animals die, their bodies return to the earth for the plants to grow from them. There is a permanence associated with the cycle, and a permanence associated with the earth itself.”

“What about things with souls,” she asked. “When I die, my body returns to the earth, but what happens to my soul?”

Remus laughed out loud. “You’d have to ask God that, Gin. How the hell should I know?”

“Aren’t you curious?” she asked.

“Well, I suppose, but I’m perfectly content to wait and find out. To answer that now would require one of the deepest perversions of magic. And anyway, you’re meant to be learning earth magic, not necromancy.”

She frowned.

“Now. We’ll start by reaching with our magic. See if you can feel the life force of this little vine among all the vitality of the forest.”

She closed her eyes obediently, and he followed suit, reaching out and feeling the entirety of the forest, sorting through all the clamor of the life in it.

Several minutes passed, and he could feel the warm glow of her magic beside him. He could feel it washing over him, spilling into the trees around them, probing into the earth. Then, after a few more minutes, he heard a giggle.

He opened his eyes to find that she had coaxed his plant into full bloom, and she was wrapped in vines of night-blooming wisteria, dripping with little purple flowers. The fragrance rose in the air, and she giggled madly as clumps of flowers snaked up her arms and began climbing into her hair.

“ _Ginny.”_

“Ok, ok. Sorry. I’m focusing!”

She closed her eyes again, and sneezed as a clump of purple flowers brushed against the top of her nose. Her stomach growled loudly, and she grinned at him apologetically. Remus chuckled.

“Let’s head home, Gin. We’ll work on it more tomorrow morning.”

He stood up and hauled her to her feet, and she shook the flowers off. She smiled at him and held out her arm, and he apparated them home, the feeling of fondness spinning along with him as they whipped through space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	19. Draco Malfoy and the Persistent Cuddle

As Draco blinked away the haze of unconsciousness, he awoke to the realization that he was not where he should be. A thick, heavy covering was thrown over his face, blocking his vision, and he strained to free himself, but something was wrapped around him, restraining him. He thrashed, but it was useless. It felt as though he was trapped under a thousand pounds of Earth.

_Oh God._

He'd been buried! Someone had buried him alive! He struggled with all his might, trying to free himself from whatever was covering his head so he could see. He wanted to scream, but he held his tongue. Screaming would only waste what little air he may have left. He tried to move his arms, but it was useless. He was pinned.

Then, just as he had worked himself into a proper panic, the covering was ripped back, and he found himself staring into the face of…

_Ginny Weasley?_

“There you two are,” she said. “I’ve been looking all over the house.”

“Weasley. Thank God,” he breathed. “I couldn’t move.”

Ginny laughed out loud.

“Yeah, Charlie sleep-cuddles,” she said with a sympathetic grin.

Draco looked down to find Charlie, stripped down to his undershirt and pants, lying bodily on top of him. He had managed to wrap both arms around Draco and was currently crushing him against his obscene pectorals in some mockery of a lover’s embrace. Draco placed a palm against his chest and pushed. It was like trying to push a mountain. He wriggled for his life, but the biceps didn’t budge.

“Charlie…get… _off!”_ he snapped. Charlie let out a snore and snuggled closer.

“Awww. You guys are _cute_!” Ginny crowed, plopping unhelpfully on the side of the bed and watching Draco struggle.

“How do you get him off you?” he asked her, mustering his best puppy-dog face. She rolled her eyes.

“CHARLIE!” she barked. “TIME TO GET UP, LAZY ASS!” She seized him by the forearm and began slapping him in the face with his own hand. “Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself, Charlie!”

Finally, he yawned widely and sat up, and Draco sucked in a deep breath and scrambled away in a desperate bid for freedom.

“Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!”

“Oh my God, Gin, quit!” he groaned.

“What? I’m not doing anything. You’re hitting _yourself!_ ”

She was still smacking his hand against the side of his head. Draco abandoned all pretenses of civility and stared.

“ _Stop it,_ Ginevra.”

“Nope!”

Charlie lunged at her, and she shrieked and leaped off the bed. Charlie dove after her, his feet tangling in the blanket, and he crashed face-first into the floor as she ran from the room laughing.

“Ugh. What the fuck?” he asked blearily.

“Don’t look at me. She’s your sister.”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t remind me,” he grumbled, retrieving yesterday’s clothes from the floor and giving them a sniff before slipping them back on. He stomped out of the room, and about 30 seconds later, Draco heard a crash and several expletives. As he made his way to the loo, he could hear Ginny laughing madly from a floor below.

The loo had been easy to find, but as he turned what may have been the same corner for a third time, he realized he wasn’t entirely sure where he was. The old house was expansive, unsettling, and unsettlingly familiar, and Draco felt the creeping hypervigilance that had taken hold of him after the Mark and refused to let go.

Something was familiar, in the way that looking at an old, black-and-white photograph is familiar; like the feeling of recognizing a face out of a different time. He forced himself to breathe slowly, willing the prickling feeling to pass. He hated it, but he had also learned that trying to stop it made it worse, so he tried to suffocate the feeling by refusing to acknowledge it. He stared at his boots as he walked, and the little scuffs and dings in the wood of the floor, ignoring the long, dimness of the corridor, and the rows of closed doors, all heavy oakwood, the lintels carved with old runes and unfamiliar symbols. He wanted to call out for Charlie, but he was afraid to raise his voice, as though something might hear him.

He looked up, quickly, and saw a staircase leading down, and he followed it, hoping it led to wherever Charlie and Ginny had gone. He descended the stairs and began to walk faster, fighting the urge to look over his shoulder. He looked up again and stopped. There, at the end up the hall, was the unmistakable form of Severus Snape. He was standing in front of a closed door, his hand extended, fingers not quite touching the brass knob, just staring at it.

“ _Severus!”_ Draco cried.

Severus whipped around, startled, and Draco scrambled toward him. He stopped in front of the man, and immediately, tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. He hadn’t seen Severus since before the battle. Hadn’t been there when he almost died. Hadn’t been there when he opened his shop. He had spent the weeks and months after the war writing letters to the man, every day, and hadn’t sent them. Unable to stop himself, he darted forward and threw his arms around him and buried his face in his chest. And Severus, as he did every time anyone touched him, went utterly still, like a rabbit, frozen in the shadow of some bird of prey. After a few moments, Severus seemed to come back to himself, and wrapped his arms around Draco, squeezing him once, quickly, then pushing him away, as though he had touched something that was just a bit too hot. Draco looked up at him. He reached out and smoothed Draco’s hair, then jerked his hand back, as though someone might see.

“Severus.”

“Draco.”

 _“Severus, I’m SORRY,”_ Draco yelped, unable to stop himself. He sucked in a breath, fighting back a sob.

Severus’ face went very blank, more blank than usual, which Draco knew to mean that Severus was uncertain of how to respond.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, calmly, forcing the quiver out of his voice. This apology had been clawing at the inside of him long before he ever made an oath.

“What’s all this, then?” Severus replied, his voice a careful monotone.

“I should have listened to you. In sixth year. You were trying to help me and _I was so stupid_ I thought I could handle it on my own and I should have listened to you, I-”

Severus stepped forward and placed his hand gently on Draco’s shoulder, which was as close as he would come to hugging him since Draco had been a little boy. He was hit by a wave of flashback, remembering tugging on the hem of Severus’ robes and insisting on being picked up, so that he could see the inside of Severus’ cauldron. He remembered crawling onto the man’s lap and watching as he projected constellations onto the library ceiling, listening patiently as Draco rattled off all their names. He remembered the stone-stillness every time he ran to hug the man, and his father rapping the back of his legs with his walking stick, snarling at him to _“quit clinging, Draco, behave yourself.”_

“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. I’m sorry I took the Mark. I’m sorry I let Death Eaters into the castle,” he began, his voice cracking.

“I’m sorry you almost died and _I wasn’t even there to help you,”_ he choked out in a rush.

“Draco, you-”

“Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault,” he snapped, feeling irrational. It was the same thing his mother had spouted, _“it wasn’t your fault, you were just a child.”_ It made him angry. He might have been a child then. But so were all the other children who had chosen to stay back and fight.

“Draco, I am a fully-qualified wizard, and you were barely out of school. There was nothing you could have done, and it was hardly your responsibility-”

“It wasn’t _Potter’s_ responsibility either, but he was there,” Draco snapped. “He was there, and I wasn’t, and I should have been. I’m sorry. You needed help. I should have been there.”

“Draco…”

Severus looks at him, and for a moment, the blankness falls, and he looks so confused, and Draco chokes and, fat, wet tears are pouring down his face. Severus pulls out his wand and conjures a handkerchief, and hands it to him wordlessly.

“Listen to me, Draco,” Severus began, his voice unusually gentle. “I am your godfather. I took an Unbreakable Vow to protect you. I wanted you to be safe. You did exactly what you were supposed to do. You weren’t supposed to be off on some harebrained quest to rescue me or anyone else. You were supposed to stay with your family, and stay safe, and you did that.”

Draco was hit by the memory of Potter and Granger, squashed into the middle of a crowd of Weasleys in the Great Hall after the battle. Family. He thought of Charlie, his lone form facing down a horde of Inferi, willing to risk his life rather than leave Draco behind. _“YOU are my family too,”_ he wanted to say, but he held his tongue. His eyes burned. He rested his head against Severus’ shoulder, and Severus let him.

After a moment, he raised his head, wiped his eyes, gathered himself. Severus looked mildly alarmed, but he didn’t seem angry. Draco looked at him again, and was startled to find Severus wearing muggle clothing. He was dressed like Charlie, in a faded red t-shirt, ripped blue jeans, and a pair of hand-knitted socks. He looked different. He looked good dressed like that, Draco realized, and the thought was strange. More strangely, he looked comfortable in the clothes, like he belonged in them, and it struck Draco that Severus was a half-blood. Or rather, he had always known, distantly, that Severus’ father had been a muggle; he’d heard the whispers of idle gossip, _“poor Eileen, ran off with that awful muggle boy and hasn't shown her face since,”_ but he’d never really thought about Severus growing up in a muggle town, wearing muggle clothes, playing with little muggle kids. He was suddenly aware of how little he knew about the man, his own godfather. He felt unaccountably nervous and fiddled with the edge of the handkerchief for something to do with his hands.

“Come, Draco,” Severus said. He ushered Draco back up the hall and turned a corner at a statue of a malevolent-looking gargoyle. There was another staircase, and Severus stopped on the top of the landing and turned to Draco.

“Now. What is this nonsense I hear about you taking up as dragon-tamer’s apprentice?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	20. Severus Snape and the Endless Stream of Questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG you guys, my little baby has over 1000 views. I'm so proud of her. She keeps on growing. Thank you to everyone who's stuck with me so far!

“It’s _magizoology,_ there’s a difference between _magizoology_ and _dragon-taming!”_ Draco cried indignantly. Severus sat on the top step of the landing and watched the boy’s face grow red. He let him work himself into a full tirade, tuning out the details. Draco was always an easy mark; get the boy worked up and there was no telling what would come pouring out of his mouth.

“Charlie Weasley happens to be the youngest wizard in the history of the United Kingdom to complete a dual mastery and the only wizard on the _continent_ to hold a qualification in both magizoology and veterinary healing, and I _hardly see_ what’s wrong with me taking him as a mentor, it isn’t as though-”

“I’m quite certain that Mr. Weasley is just as accomplished as you say,” he said, cutting Draco off mid-rant. “And I am just as certain that you are in no way studying magizoology.”

And there was Draco’s tell- his eyes widened for a split second.

“What do you mean I’m not-”

“Do not mistake me for a fool, Draco. I have known you since you were no bigger than a _house elf._ I don’t believe for a single minute that you have any interest in magizoology.”

Draco blinks at him. He isn’t concerned for the boy’s safety; whatever he’s doing with Charlie Weasley, it won’t be anything illegal, and if it’s dangerous, he has no doubt that Charlie, being the Gryffindor that he is, will keep Draco safe. But if he’s honest with himself, he’s terribly curious.

For a moment he’s tempted to try Legilimency, but Draco is undoubtedly already occluding. Bella had taught him, with a patience and thoroughness that Severus would never have thought her capable of, and despite his high temper, Draco was a capable occlumens.

“You’re right, of course,” Draco said, and Severus did a double-take.

“I didn’t have any interest in magizoology. When I took the apprenticeship, I couldn’t even walk down the street in Diagon Alley without being hexed or cursed or threatened. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know who my mentor would be. All I knew was that I was going to be stationed in a country where no one would know my name, so I did it. And I don’t regret it. Magizoology is quite fascinating, even if it’s not what I would have picked to study had my circumstances been different.”

He regarded Draco for a long moment. The boy was not telling the whole truth; Severus knew by the way he had schooled his face into blankness. But he didn’t seem to be lying, either.

“And what of Mr. Weasley?” he asked. “How are you finding his mentorship?”

Draco smiled gently, the expression foreign on his face.

“I was…uncertain, at first. But Charlie Weasley has been a good mentor to me. He took me without so much as blinking at my name. I will admit that I was…misguided, when I was younger. I said things about Charlie’s family that were out of line.”

Severus stares at him as though something has possessed him. Draco’s host body stares back, fidgeting uncomfortably. Whatever foreign life form has taken over his godson clearly is not aware that Malfoys do not acknowledge any culpability, ever, and they certainly don’t do things as mundane as fidget. He can almost hear Narcissa’s voice, “ _Draco, do stop fidgeting, darling, it’s unbecoming.”_ He missed Narcissa with a sharp, quick wistfulness. He wished she were here. She would have had this strangeness that had overcome the boy sorted out in no time.

“Severus?” Draco asked, his voice small and uncertain in a way he hadn’t heard since Draco was a child, sitting forlornly on Severus’ sofa with a cup of tea, wondering why Slytherins couldn’t play Quidditch in first year if Gryffindors could, and why no one outside of his own house seemed to like him, and why Harry Potter hadn’t wanted to shake his hand on the train.

Draco had always been determined to confide in Severus, spouting fears and insecurities that were a little too familiar to be comfortable, but no matter how many times he snarled at the boy to “ _quit bothering with such trivialities,”_ Draco would keep coming back. And after every visit, he was left feeling wrong-footed, like he had missed something important. But a part of him very quietly liked the visits. Draco would share things with him that he would admit to no one else, not even his parents, and though Severus would never have acknowledged it out loud, that closeness had planted a little seed of affection in him.

Draco was fidgeting again.

“Yes, what is it?” Severus snapped.

“I…”

Draco seemed to be wrestling with his words, and this was a struggle that he could understand.

“What is it, Draco?” he said, schooling the harshness out of his voice. “Whatever you wish to say to me, you may say it.”

“Ginny Weasley said you’d been hurt,” Draco replied, changing the subject. The evasion bothered him, but he let it go. The boy would speak his mind eventually.

“Yes. I was looking into a report of Death Eater activity, and I ran across Miss Weasley doing the same. We happened upon the Death Eaters in question, and had to duel them to get away.”

“Were you hurt badly?”

“Initially. Miss Weasley had an uncommon stroke of good sense and apparated me straight here. Sirius Black and his apprentice tended to me.”

“Sirius Black? As in the House of Black?” he asked.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Draco was looking at him strangely.

“Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban and broke into Hogwarts and tried to kill Harry Potter in our third year,” Draco said.

“That he did.”

“Was he actually…?”

“A mass murderer?” Severus finished. “No. And before you ask me anything else, I have absolutely no interest in Black’s life story, nor do I have any desire to repeat what little I know to you. Aside from having astoundingly poor impulse control and the mental depth of a turnip, Sirius Black is not dangerous. Or at least not directly. And if he did endanger you in any way, I would kill him where he stands.”

Draco coughed into his hand, trying to conceal a snort of laughter.

“My mother was a Black,” Draco said. “This house…I’ve just realized why it feels so familiar.”

“Yes. Your mother was Sirius Black’s first cousin.”

“I’ve been here too,” Draco said, looking around excitedly. “When I was little. But I remember it being…”

“Cleaner?” he supplied.

“Well…yes. What happened to this place?”

“It stood empty for over a decade. It fell victim to disrepair.”

“Severus? Did mother know Sirius Black?”

“Yes. And you’ll meet him soon. It’s almost time for breakfast. You’ll see a few more familiar faces too, I’m sure. You’ve already seen Miss Weasley and Miss Granger. You’ll remember Remus Lupin, he was your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in third year. Potter and Ronald Weasley live here, although they are elsewhere at present. And, if I understand correctly, half of the rest of the Gryffindors in your year seem to live in this house, though I’ve yet to run across anyone else besides Neville Longbottom. They seem to be practicing some sort of cohabitational communism. Although, I suppose there’s plenty of space for it. From what I’ve gathered, only about a third of the house is even being used.”

“Severus?”

“Yes, Draco?”

“Did you know Sirius Black?”

“Yes. We went to Hogwarts together. He was in my year, in Gryffindor house, along with Lupin, Pettigrew, and that absolute idiot, James Potter.”

“Severus?”

“Yes, Draco, what is it?”

“Was James Potter…”

“Harry Potter’s unfortunate excuse for a father, yes.”

“Severus?”

“Yes, Draco?”

“You sound like you didn’t get on with them.”

“I didn’t. They were idiots who thought they were cleverer than they really were.”

“Severus?”

“ _Now what is it, Draco?”_

“Pettigrew was…Wormtail?”

 _“Yes. The piece of withered scum you knew as Wormtail was called Peter Pettigrew, yes._ Now no more questions. I’ve only just woken up; I haven’t even managed a cup of tea.”

“Sorry, Severus,” Draco said, sounding completely unapologetic.

“Severus?”

He sighed deeply.

“ _YES,_ Draco?”

“I was only wondering if you would come with me downstairs. I need to find Charlie, but I don’t know where I am in this house.”

“We’re in the East Wing of the second floor. Follow me. I know the way down to the kitchen, and if I know anything about Charlie Weasley, that’s where we’ll find him.”

“Severus?"

He resisted the urge to slap his hand over the boy's mouth.

"Yes, Draco?"

"Did you teach Charlie potions?”

“Yes, Draco.”

“What was he like? As a student, I mean?”

“Well... he was outstanding as a potions student,” he began, dredging up old memories of Charlie as a boy and rattling them off to Draco as they walked.

“Are you and Charlie friends?”

He frowned at the question.

“Charlie Weasley is my former student. We have had little contact after he graduated.”

“Oh…I just thought…he seemed worried when he heard you’d been hurt. And he seemed to really want to see you.”

“Did he?” asked Severus, surprised.

But before he could answer, they descended the second-floor staircase and turned a corner to find the man in question on his way to the kitchen, carrying his sister piggyback.

Draco hastened down the stairs, and Severus breathed a sigh of relief. _God._ He’d forgotten how much Draco could talk.

He followed the three of them through the maze of corridors into the foyer, and they all fell silent at once, creeping past the sleeping portrait of Walburga Black and into the kitchen.

Lupin was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing a pair of old flannel pajama bottoms and the rattiest jumper he had ever seen, and leaning back against his chair tiredly. Black is standing at the counter, pouring a cup of coffee from a blue enamel percolator, wearing nothing but a pair of dark blue boxer shorts. He turns, holding a steaming cup in each hand, and Severus can’t help but catch sight of him. His chest is covered in a layer of thick, black hair, that trails down the plane of his body and disappears beneath the waistband of his shorts. He’s filled out since Severus saw him last. During the war, he had been barely more than a hollowed-out corpse, emaciated and weak from Azkaban. But the years have done him good; this version of him is strong, all hard muscle shifting confidently beneath tattooed skin. The black ink catches his eye, and he sees symbols he doesn’t recognize, and runes, etched raggedly beneath his collarbones and down the length of his biceps, across his belly, and arms, and in the hollows of his hipbones, and across his heart.

Black catches him staring, one eyebrow cocked just slightly. He looks around. Everyone in the room is staring at him staring.

“Your runes don’t make any sense,” he tells Black flatly.

“They make sense to me,” Black replies, setting a mug down on the table in front of Lupin.

“Oh hello, Charlie,” Lupin says, peering around Black’s torso at the man, who is still carrying Ginny on his back. “And…Draco? How…er…unexpected.”

Draco looks back and forth between Black and Lupin uncertainly.

“Charlie got in last night,” Ginny piped up. “He and Draco are going to be working at the London Menagerie for a while, but they’re gonna hang out here and help Hermione work on those rune translations too.”

“You told them, then?” Lupin asked, his voice level.

“Yes,” she replied firmly, as though daring him to question her. “And Hermione told Snape, too.”

He startled at being addressed.

“Alright, then,” Lupin said, and he looked at Ginny for a moment, some silent understanding passing between them.

“The London Menagerie?” Lupin asked, directing the question curiously at Draco.

“I’m-” Draco begins, but then his eyes go wide, and he claps his hand over his own mouth. Both Ginny and Charlie cock their heads at once, shooting him the same curious look in tandem, and Severus can’t help but mirror them.

_God, but something’s gotten into that boy._

“Draco’s my apprentice,” Charlie supplies.

“Your apprentice?” Lupin asks incredulously. “Why Draco, I had no idea you were interested in magizoology. I took it that you weren’t very fond of Care of Magical Creatures in school.”

“Well, I’ve changed my mind,” Draco snapped back, sounding much more like his old self. “It’s quite interesting now that I have a competent teacher.”

“I’m pleased to hear that you’ve found something you enjoy,” Lupin replied mildly. “I’m glad to see you well, Draco.”

“I’M…er…I’m so-” Draco ground out. “I’m pleased to…see you well too, Professor.”

Charlie pulled out a chair, and tried to shake his sister off his back.

“Get off, Gin.”

“Nope.”

“Ginny, get off my back, I want to sit down.”

“I’m not stopping you.”

He reached behind him and grabbed her, but she hugged him tighter and clung.

“Ginny,” Lupin interjected, “Let Charlie sit down. We’ll want to hear all about the London Menagerie.”

“Fine,” she said, sliding off Charlie’s back and into a chair beside Lupin, and Charlie shot Lupin a glare, so brief that Severus almost missed it.

“Oh, Sirius,” Lupin said, “I’m not sure you’ve met Draco. This is Draco Malfoy.”

Black looked hard at Draco for a moment, and walked toward him.

“You’re Cissy’s boy,” Black said gently. He stopped in front of Draco, and raised a hand to his face, running his thumb across Draco’s cheek. Draco stood, paralyzed, watching Black warily. “I haven’t seen you since you were born,” he said. There was a flash of undisguised pain in his eyes, and this was a pain that Severus understood. Severus had gotten to watch Draco grow up, and he knew what Black had missed. He felt an unexpected stab of sympathy.

“I remember you,” Draco said. “You came to Hogwarts in our third year. Everyone said you’d broken out of Azkaban.”

“Indeed, I did,” Black replied, his soft voice low.

“Sirius!” Ginny barked, breaking the strangeness. “How do you know Malfoy?”

“We’re cousins,” Black replied, a familiar grin back on his face. “Narcissa Malfoy was Narcissa Black, before she married. Cissy and I grew up together.”

Ginny looked back and forth between them, appraisingly.

“I guess I can kind of see it,” she said finally. “You have the same eyes.”

And indeed, Black had the same storm-grey eyes as both Draco and his mother. Regulus had those eyes too, he remembered. He looked away from Black, something in his chest tight.

A moment later, Lovegood walked in, hair still damp from a shower, and immediately ushered Severus into a chair, chiding him mildly for being up and walking around.

“You’re meant to be resting in bed,” she said gently, walking over to the stove and setting a kettle on to boil.

There was a ‘crack,’ and Neville Longbottom appeared in the middle of the kitchen floor, covered in dirt and leaves and little cuts and scratches, and swaying on his feet.

“Oh, hello, Neville,” Lovegood said, meandering over and grabbing his arms to inspect his injuries. “How was your shift? Did you find that woman?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking briefly between Severus and Draco, then yawning widely. “Oh man,” he said. “I’m going to be so glad when they pull us off double shifts. I hate working nights.”

He sagged against Lovegood as she mended the larger of his cuts with the tip of her wand.

“We found her wandering in a Loch. Turns out she’d been abducted right out of her bed by her ex-husband. She was being held hostage in an old cabin, and she she saw a will-o-the-wisp through her bedroom window and followed it halfway across Scotland thinking it would lead her home. Me and Lav finally found her, but then the ex-husband turns up right behind us.”

Longbottom threw himself into a chair beside Ginny, and Granger walked through the kitchen door, still clad in flannel pajamas, hair bushy and tangled from sleep. Her eyes were red, and she took one look at Neville, and smiled wryly.

“You too, huh?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing the back of his head and yawning again. “Still on double shifts. But we found the missing woman.”

“Good,” she said, sitting beside Longbottom and watching him with sleepy interest. “Was she alright?”

“Yeah. Scared. Confused. Lost in a Loch. Found out her ex-husband kidnapped her. I almost did something stupid, though,” he said, looking around guiltily. “When we found her, the ex showed up, right there in the middle of the bog, claiming to be her brother and wanting to take her back home, and I didn’t think anything of it. But Lav recognized the guy; apparently she used to date him. We went to school with him, too. It was Cormac McLaggen, remember that mad bloke who hit Harry over the head with a beater’s bat?”

“Oh, I remember him,” Granger said with a sort of haunted look in her eye.

“Cormac McLaggen?” Draco cut in, a look of alarm on his face. “Longbottom…who was the woman you were looking for?”

Longbottom looked uncomfortably between Draco and Granger.

“It’s all right, Neville,” she said. “Now that he’s been taken into custody, it’s public record anyway.”

“Right, er… the woman’s name was Daphne Greengrass. She was at Hogwarts with us too, in-”

“Slytherin,” Draco supplied. “Excuse me,” he said, scrambling to his feet. He shot Charlie a frantic look.

“Go on, then,” Charlie said. “Check on your friend. But you’ve got PT when you get back.”

“Right,” Draco said, nearly running through the kitchen door.

“You can use the fireplace in the library,” Black called after him. “The one in the parlor’s got bats in the chimney!”

“So what happened, Nev,” Ginny asked. “After the ex showed up?”

“Oh, yeah…well Lavender recognized him, and he panicked and pulled out his wand, and of course Lav had him laid out flat on his arse in about 3 seconds flat, but the Greengrass lady saw what happened and started crying, and Lav was trying to calm her down, and the guy just kept rambling some mad nonsense about death and the veil and something about judgement upon the interlopers. It was all a bit mad. We arrested him, and he’s under guard at St. Mungo’s now.”

“Well I hope she’s alright,” Granger piped up. “I remember her, she was in our year. She had a little sister at Hogwarts, too.”

“Astoria, yeah,” Ginny supplied. “She was in me and Luna’s year. She was nice if you tried talking to her, but she didn’t spend much time with anyone outside Slytherin.”

Severus was a bit concerned; he’d been fond of both Greengrass sisters.

“Mr. Longbottom?” he asked, unable to help himself.

“Er… yes, uh…Professor?”

“Are you certain that Miss Greengrass was unharmed?”

“Oh, uh…yes, sir. Lavender took her to St. Mungo’s, and stayed with her until her family came and picked her up. She was a bit scared, but not hurt. Healers said she’d make a full recovery.”

“I’m glad. It was good that she had you and Miss Brown,” he said, and though he was still mildly amused at the idea of Neville Longbottom as an Auror, he meant it. Longbottom flushed a bit at the unexpected praise.

Black’s house elf appeared from a little room under the boiler, blinking away sleep, and his arrival heralded the preparation of breakfast, which, Severus noted, was just as chaotic as the day before. Halfway through the meal, Draco reappeared, and he shot Severus a look that he knew to mean _all is well._

Longbottom had started to fall asleep at the table, and Lovegood shook him awake and led him off to bed. Black was chattering loudly to Charlie about dragons, his laughter at odds with the tenseness in his posture. Granger was picking determinedly at her breakfast, as though forcing herself to eat it required some act of will. Lupin seemed exhausted, and Ginny Weasley was shooting worried glances at him, sneaking more bacon and bits of fruit onto his plate every time he looked away. For all their boisterousness, there was an underlying tension that seemed to have gripped everyone in the house. They were all on edge, he supposed, waiting for news about Potter and Weasley.

Finally, Granger pushed her plate away.

“I’m going to start working on those translations,” she said aloud, rising from the table. “The faster I can make sense of the purpose of those spells, the better.”

“I’ll come up with you,” Black said. “I had a few ideas about the binding symbolism I wanted to run by you. Moony? You coming?”

“I don’t think so,” Lupin. “The moon’s in two days. I’m not going to be much help.”

With a start, Severus realized that he was sleeping in a house that contained a werewolf and it was nearly the full moon. He wondered who was making Wolfsbane for the man. He was taking it, surely? But before he could ask, Ginny padded over to a cabinet, pulled a large, amber glass bottle from a shelf, and poured a goblet full of the inky-black potion, sliding it across the table to Lupin, who downed it with a grimace.

“Molly must have made that batch,” he said with a wry smile. “Somehow she manages to make it taste a little better.”

Severus let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Of course he was taking Wolfsbane. There was no need to worry.

Charlie and Draco had gotten up, and Charlie turned to him.

“Severus? Draco and I are going to get some PT done, but we’ll be back in an hour or two. Will you still be here?”

“It seems as though I will be staying for the next three days, at least. Miss Lovegood seems to think I need to lay completely still that whole time to heal properly,” he said, just a bit resentfully.

“Right. We’ll see you then,” he said, and he grinned, and Severus was struck by the sight of it. He had never really noticed before, but a smile looked good on Charlie. He smiled back, involuntarily, before managing to get a grip on himself.

“Until then,” he said, ignoring Draco’s inquisitive look.

“Until then,” Charlie replied.

He turned to find himself alone in the room with Lupin, who was being force-fed a vitamin potion by the house-elf. The elf turned his gaze on Severus, and brandished the potion bottle, and Severus beat a hasty retreat. He had no idea what a potion brewed by a house-elf would do to him, and he didn’t want to find out. 

He made his way back up to the bedroom, wincing by the time he made it through the door. He hated the idea of being stuck laying around, but at least today wouldn’t be a total waste. He had found a stash of Judge Dredd comics hidden under Dean Thomas’ mattress. He yawned, and stretched very carefully, settling into bed with the first issue. Maybe he could manage to lay around for three days after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	21. Draco Malfoy and the Arcane Magic, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo I'm kind of excited again because my little baby has crossed the 50,000-word mark. I just can't believe how big she's gotten. There are going to be a couple more Draco chapters, then we'll see some shit go down, along with some Wolfstar action. I realize that we're 50,000 words into the story and we still don't know where Harry and Ron are, but that will come in good time too. 
> 
> For now: Draco crying again! (Yes, I know he does that a lot)
> 
> Coming soon: plot movement!

By the time Draco realized something was wrong, he was already flat on his arse. He had expected the Forbidden Forest; the topography of the forest, and the bluffs that formed its Eastern border, was similar enough to the bluffs on the reserve that it was the only logical place for physical training within apparating distance of Grimmauld Place.

Charlie, however, had apparated them to a large meadow on a hilltop overlooking the village of Ottery-St-Catchpole, surrounded on three sides by a sheer cliff-face, and open to the drop of another cliff, which overlooked the village. Draco was standing near the edge, looking down, just about to ask Charlie how in the hell he had managed to find this place, when Charlie walked up beside him, threw an arm around his shoulders, and jerked him backward, slamming him into the dirt.

“ _What the hell,”_ he snapped, glaring up at Charlie. But instead of a teasing grin, the man wore the same deadly-serious expression Draco had seen on him once before, facing down Death Eaters, outnumbered.

“Get up,” Charlie said.

Draco frowned at him, but pushed himself up from the dirt, only to be slammed back down the second he was on his feet.

_“What the actual hell, Charlie?!”_

“Get up.”

This time, Draco jumped to his feet and scrambled backward, buying himself a mere few seconds before he was back on his arse.

“Fuck you,” Draco snapped, his face beginning to burn.

“Up,” Charlie replied.

“Fuck you. No.”

“Get up, Draco.”

“No. What are you-”

Charlie lunged forward, snatched him by the shirt collar, and hauled him to his feet, then slammed the heel of his palm hard into Draco’s chest. Draco stumbled back, and Charlie hit him again, watching as he toppled backward.

Before he could even get his feet beneath him, Charlie pulled him back up.

“I want you to hit me,” he said.

“What? No.”

“Don’t argue with me, Draco. Try to hit me.”

“You’re mad!”

“Maybe. Hit me.”

He darted forward, and Draco shoved at him, hard, and Charlie seized him by the bicep and pulled, and Draco found himself flying head-over-arse-end over Charlie’s shoulder. He hit the ground with a thud.

“Get the fuck away from me,” Draco snarled, finally beginning to snap out of his shock.

He jumped up, lunging to the side just in time to avoid a fist.

“No. Fight me.”

Charlie lunged at him, and this time he balled up a fist and struck, and Charlie batted his hand away almost lazily.

He swung, and Charlie knocked his hand aside, and he swung again, and Charlie stepped into the arc of his arm, grabbed his wrist, and slammed his other arm hard into the side of Draco’s head. Draco stumbled, and Charlie grabbed his falling body and wrapped him up, pinning Draco’s arms against him.

“Get the _fuck off me,”_ he shouted, jerking helplessly against the whip-strong arms around him.

He thrashed with the full weight of his body, and realized, with a burgeoning horror, that he was powerless; he was at the other man's mercy. He hadn’t even had a chance to draw his wand. His initial shock had given rise to anger, but now even the rush of adrenaline that came with the anger had left him, replaced by an abstract sort of fear, along with a humiliating flush of arousal, which he stamped down hard. He snarled, angry, hating himself for trusting the man, and the oldest, deepest parts of him seethed at the betrayal, rearing up in sneering anger. But he couldn't hold onto it; he didn’t want to hate Charlie. Charlie carried his adult baby sister around on his back. Charlie had shown him how to dice potatoes in his mother’s kitchen. As if on instinct, he stumbled into the blow, wrapping his arms around him and holding on. 

“ _Why are you doing this?”_ he cried, choking back a sob. “What did I do _wrong?”_

“What?” Charlie asked. Draco looked up at him. His brow was furrowed, and he was looking at Draco as though he had grown an extra head. Draco clung tighter, his face flaming. He felt like a fool, but even still, he couldn’t bring himself to let go _._ In the back of his mind, he could hear the echo of his father’s voice, calling him _soft._

“Why are you doing this?” he choked out.

“Draco…?”

Then Charlie’s arms were around him, smooshing him against his chest.

“Draco, what are you on about?”

His thumbs were rubbing little circles against Draco’s back. The days of tense strangeness, the feeling of being an outsider in someone else’s home, the confusing collision of gratitude and humiliation every time he was forced to accept the grace of other people’s families and other people’s friends, all of it hit him, and in true Draco Malfoy fashion, his fragile grasp on the dignity his poor mother had tried so hard to instill in him slipped right away, and like the blubbering mess that he was, he started crying right into Charlie’s armpit.

“Hey, Draco…”

Charlie was rubbing his back, and it felt so good to hug someone, he couldn’t even bring himself to care that the someone had just tried to kill him.

“Draco. Look at me,” Charlie said, putting the force of authority into the words, and Draco looked up.

“What happened? Did I hurt you?”

“Did you hurt… Did you just ask if you hurt me?” he barked, incredulous. “You just threw me on the ground five times, punched me, then nearly suffocated the life out of me!”

“Well…yeah,” Charlie said, appearing genuinely bewildered. “We’ve got to pick your training back up some time…You didn’t think I was really going to…?”

Draco stared up at him and failed to restrain the bark of mad laughter that bubbled up in his chest.

He squeezed Draco tighter, wrapping a massive hand around the back of his head protectively, and Draco sobbed.

“You thought I was going to hurt you.” His face twisted up in horror. “Draco, I would never…”

He fell silent, and they stood there for some time, until Draco finally relaxed, leaning his whole body against the man.

“What were you doing?” he asked finally. “Why were you attacking me?”

“I told you…it’s time for me to start training you. It was a mistake for me to have left it off this long.”

“And somehow I’m supposed to learn magic with you knocking me around with your giant ham fists?”

“Well…yeah. That’s how I learned.”

Draco stills for a moment. It’s only the second time he’s ever heard Charlie acknowledge the life he had before Draco, when he was an apprentice himself. Draco is still angry, but more so, he is curious. And he has a feeling he might not get another chance to ask.

“Who taught you magic like that? A band of giants?” he snaps.

He looks up again, and Charlie’s face is flat, but there is the unmistakable flash of sorrow in his eyes, and for a moment, Draco regrets pushing.

“No. Greta. My mentor.”

And Draco can read between the lines of his grief and reverence.

“You were lovers,” he said.

“No,” Charlie replied, with a heaviness that Draco could almost feel. “We would have been, if that was something I could have made myself be. But I loved her. We loved each other.”

Draco very firmly did not understand, but he didn’t question Charlie any further.

“I suppose I should have realized it would be something mad,” he said, smiling wryly at Charlie. “Some Gryffindor rite-of-passage thing. After you eliminate the weakest among you by Sunday afternoon troll-wrestling, you challenge each other for dominance by just hitting each other until there’s only one left standing.”

Charlie snorts and shakes his head.

“It really wasn’t like that, you know.”

“Secret baby dragons,” Draco said flatly. “Roaming around the Forbidden Forest at all hours. Three-headed dogs. Breaking into the Ministry of Magic. Tossing a teacher into a herd of mad centaurs. I’ve heard stories.”

“To be fair, that was mostly my siblings.”

“Who are all Gryffindors.”

“Well…yes.”

“May I ask a clarifying question?”

“Uh…sure.”

“Why didn’t you at least tell me what you were doing before you started trying to murder me.”

“Well…Most people would’ve just fought back,” Charlie replies, a touch defensively.

“Yes. With a wand. It wasn’t like I was expecting you to launch into a demonstration of muggle duelling.”

“I mean…isn't that sort of instinctive? Someone attacks you, you fight back.”

“Yes. _With a wand.”_

“You’ve never been in a fistfight?”

“Only once, and it happened to be with one of your brothers, so I suppose that explains something.”

“You never like...got into fights with your friends when you were a kid?"

"No," Draco said incredulously. "My mother would have murdered me."

"Well, then. Right. You have absolutely no idea how to defend yourself. I guess we'll have to start with some basics."

“May I ask another clarifying question?” he asked, finally releasing Charlie and leaning back, arms crossed.

“I suppose.”

“Why is it necessary for me to go flailing about like a _muggle_ when I’m a _wizard_ with a _wand?”_

Charlie sighed.

“Alright. Let me show you something. See that rock on the ground? Can you transfigure it into an apple?”

Draco huffed indignantly, picking the rock up and rapping it with the tip of his wand, watching in satisfaction as the slate-grey stone yields into red smoothness.

“Good. Now throw it as far and as high as you can,” Charlie said, and Draco stopped to consider that the man may actually be mad, but succumbed to curiosity, tossing the fruit high into the air over the cliff-side.

Then, so fast he can hardly follow it, a white light forms in Charlie’s palms and morphs, twisting into the shape of a bow. Flash-quick, he knocks a glowing arrow against the string, pulls it back, and lets the arrow fly, and it pierces the apple in the dead center, lingering for a moment, then flickering out of existence. Draco can see the hole in the apple as it falls. He looks back at Charlie, and the glowing bow is gone, and the electric tang of power crackles in the air around them.

He stares. Charlie rubs the back of his head with a little, embarrassed sort of smile.

“What in the arse did you just do?” Draco asks, acutely aware of goosebumps raising along the flesh of his arms.

“Magic,” Charlie said, smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	22. Draco Malfoy and the Cleanest Bedroom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi folks. I've been slowly chipping away at this chapter all week, so I'm excited to get it out into the world, and we're gonna end up with one more Draco chapter after this before we get some plot movement. I don't wanna say much more because I don't want to give it away :D

Draco did end up in the room with the windows, and spent the next hour waging outright war against dust. He was tired, sweaty, and covered in a dingy film, and hardly any closer to rendering the room habitable. He was almost ready to give up and sleep on the floor, when he turned to find three faces peering in at him from the doorway.

He jumped, startled.

“What are you staring at,” he snapped.

“You,” Ginny replied. “Have you ever actually cleaned anything before?”

“Obviously not. That’s what a house-elf is for.”

“Useless,” Ginny said, rolling her eyes and stomping through the door.

“Hey! Watch your-”

 _“Scourgify,”_ she cut him off, slinging the charm straight at him. The grime on his skin and clothes vanished. Grudgingly, he was impressed.

“Watch and learn,” she said. “Ready, boys?”

She looked over her shoulder at Thomas and Longbottom, who were both grinning, wands drawn. Then, she took a running leap at the massive four-poster bed and landed flush in the center, sending up a wave of dust.

 _“Tergeo,”_ cried the boys in tandem. Ginny began jumping enthusiastically on the bed, and after a moment, Thomas and Longbottom joined her, all three of them stirring up dust and vanishing it in thick clouds. They were laughing madly. Ginny’s pale skin was so grimy that her freckles had disappeared beneath a layer of dirt. They looked like a bunch of drunk chimney sweeps. Draco stared at them, his mouth hanging in horror.

_Like a pack of wild animals, mucking around in filth._

Charlie poked his head through the door.

“Now why didn’t I think of that?”

Another hour later, and the room was unrecognizable. The mattress was fresh and white and covered in crisp linens that had just been pulled of the garden clothesline, and still smelled like fresh air. Someone had retrieved a thick, navy-blue bedspread and a pile of fluffy pillows. The dustcovers had been pulled off the furniture to reveal a plush, royal blue sofa and two matching chairs. The moldering wallpaper and peeling paint was restored to vibrant blues and stark whites, the motheaten rug was scourgified to reveal a lively Persian design, the wooden bed frame was polished, and the foggy windows were cleaned until the natural light poured through, bathing the room in sunset colors. The bathroom was scrubbed until the taps and tile gleamed. Spiders were banished, cobwebs were vanished, and by the time they were done, the polish and casual elegance of the room almost reminded him of the Manor.

Dusk had fallen, and the smell of food came wafting up from the lower floors, and Draco’s stomach growled at an embarrassing volume.

“None of you are going to dinner until you’ve washed up,” Charlie said, seizing Ginny by the arm and trying to wipe a smear of dirt off her cheek with his thumb. “Go wash and change your clothes. And someone save Remus from that snake.”

Lupin, who had stumbled into the room drowsily and fallen back asleep in a fat blue armchair, was wearing Ginny’s snake like a scarf.

“He likes Remus because Remus is the warmest,” Ginny said, peeling the creature off of Lupin and winding it around her arm. “There we are, Wilbur, Mommy’s back,” she cooed. “Did my widdle Wilbur miss his Mommy?”

Draco narrowly repressed a shudder.

His company dispersed, and Draco borrowed another change of clothes and carried them back to his bedroom, shutting the door behind him. He stripped, and walked into the bathroom naked, examining himself in a full-length mirror. He had always been slim, with a Seeker’s build, attractive and graceful and almost feminine, but a year of sticking to Charlie Weasley’s frankly excessive physical training regimen had left him harder. The muscle in his shoulders and had grown heavy and thick. He had abdominal muscles now. His veins wrapped around his arms like ivy, creeped down his legs, and across the tops of his feet and the backs of his hands. His body had changed, he realized. He looked more solid, stronger. He fingered the deep, dusky-pink scar across his chest, which Severus had been able to knit closed but not remove. _Scars born of cursed magic cannot be removed_ , Severus had told him. He looked at his body, stretching in front of the mirror, then climbed into the shower and stepped under the hot spray, scrubbing at the layer of grime until his skin was pink. Clean and dry and dressed, he felt more human, but he didn’t feel any stronger. The sight of his body, hardened and stout, unnerved him, as though he wasn’t quite sure it was really his, and he avoided the mirror as he made his way out of the bathroom.

Dinner was shockingly indecorous. They ate at the kitchen table, which had to be magically expanded to fit them all, despite having a formal dining room, which seated twelve, just down the hall. Dinner was a thick, creamy soup, with roasted vegetables and long loaves of still-hot, crunchy bread. Other than Longbottom and Black, who both ate sitting straight-backed and with the polish of a proper upbringing, the rest of his tablemates seemed uninterested in even bothering with their silverware, slurping their soup loudly, straight from the bowl and tearing off great hunks of bread to sop up the broth. Draco stared at his bowl, trying not to look, and felt faintly nauseous.

They were loud, and gracelessly so, but Draco was grateful for the chatter, because it gave him an excuse to stay silent. He couldn’t trust his words when they were all in a room together like this; he owed too many apologies, and the pull of his oath seemed to compound in a group.

“…can’t believe you’ve read _all_ of Tolkien,” Dean Thomas was barking excitedly at Severus, waving his soup spoon in the air. “I haven’t even read the _Peoples of Middle Earth_ OR the _Silmarilion_ , they’re never in stock at the bookstore…”

Severus looked as though he wished he could jump out of a window, and Draco couldn’t help but snicker to himself. Granger and Black were arguing rather animatedly about hieroglyphs and pictograms, and after a few minutes of it, Lovegood intervened, ordering them apart and sitting in between them. Beside him, Longbottom chattered loudly to Ginny and Charlie about the Aurory.

“…and after we’d apprehended him, he told the prosecutor he’d been confunded, so now the whole case is on hold while they bring in a Healer to try to examine his Pensieve memories, so they gave me the night off, which is fine by me. The double shifts are brutal. I swear, I’m more coffee than man at this point.”

He looked over at Longbottom, who did, indeed, look awful.

“I’ve fallen asleep at my desk twice this week. Good thing it was Tonks that caught me both times. And Dung Fletcher managed to hex me in the back last week during the apothecary sting and got away with hundreds of galleons of Acromantula eggs.”

Draco contained his sneer, but only just. _Imagine being caught sleeping at work. Or being hexed in the back by a suspect._ He still could hardly believe the Aurory had taken someone as pathetic as Neville Longbottom; he had barely been able to hang onto his wand in school. They must be desperate, Draco reasoned, with how much of the Auror force ended up as casualties of the war.

Dinner ended around the time that Lupin began drooping at the table, and he followed Charlie up to the third floor, and their newly-cleaned rooms, and Draco wished he had a pair of pajamas, but he couldn’t borrow any from Charlie, as the man didn’t wear any pajamas, and he wasn’t about to ask anyone else in the house.

“We need to take you into town tomorrow. As amusing as it is to watch you keep pushing up my shirtsleeves, you need your own clothes. You’re swimming in mine.”

“Not my fault you have biceps the size of small children,” Draco muttered, and Charlie grinned at him and winked.

“Hey, the ladies like it. And so do the gents, for that matter.”

Draco wondered at this; he couldn’t tell if Charlie was kidding or if he was really interested in men. He’d never seen the man express interest in anyone, really, even at the reserve, where half the staff had thrown themselves at him.

“We can go after PT tomorrow. Are you picky about your clothes? Because muggle London has dozens of secondhand shops, and there’s not really any point in buying things new, they’re just going to get all torn up anyway.”

“I’m not going to wear clothes that somebody else has been wearing,” Draco said, staring at Charlie in alarm.

“Draco. You’re already wearing clothes that someone else has been wearing.”

“Yes, but…well…I suppose you’re right,” Draco said, irritated. “But it’s different. I know you. You’re not… dirty.”

“Didn’t you spend seven years at Hogwarts mocking my little brother because you thought we lived in a pigsty?”

“Yes, and we’ve already established that I was a prat as a child,” Draco grumbled.

You’re still a prat,” Charlie said, but the look of affection on his face was so obvious that Draco didn’t even mind the barb.

“Well, we can go by Gringotts tomorrow and change some galleons for paper bills. I’ve been using muggle money for a while now, so I can help you with it. We ought to pick you up a couple sets of robes, too, just in case.”

“Fine,” Draco said, “but I’m buying the robes from Madam Malkin’s. I’ll not be caught dead in someone else’s ill-fitting robes.”

“Whatever makes you happy,” Charlie said, stopping in front of his door. “Get some sleep, OK? You’ve got your shit cut out for you tomorrow. We’re starting your training.”

“I can hardly wait,” Draco deadpanned, wincing at the thought of a repeat of this afternoon.

He padded down the hall to his room, pulled his drapes shut, and crawled into bed, pulling the crisp sheets over his head and breathing in. He hadn’t realized how tired he was until he laid down, and before long, he was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming, because in his dream, he was on a broom, flying after Professor Flitwick, who had stolen his potions essay. In his dream, Professor Flitwick was a shockingly good flier. He chased and chased, but couldn’t quite catch the man. Then, just as he was about to give up, he saw Ginny Weasley, who was pealing up from beneath him.

“Don’t worry,” dream-Ginny yelled to him. “My brother Charlie will catch him for you.”

And Draco saw another figure, streaking through the air, but it wasn’t Charlie. It was Potter. And Potter raced toward the man on the broom, who turned and laughed, and Flitwick was gone, and the Dark Lord was in his stead.

The Dark Lord whipped out his wand, and Potter fell from his broom in a flash of green light. And as he fell towards the earth, fountains of fire shot up, like tendrils, grabbing at him and dragging him down into flames.

Draco woke with a start. His mouth was dry. He could almost smell the memory of smoke. Smoke and ash. He shivered under his blanket.

And, after long minutes of tossing and turning, he came to the conclusion that he was not going to make it back to sleep. He slid out of his bed, grabbed his wand from his bedside table, and padded out of the room and down the hall, regretting his decision more by the second. The house had been creepy during the day. It was far, far worse after dark.

He descended a staircase, trying to mentally retrace the path to the kitchen. He recognized the second floor east wing, where he and Charlie had slept in Longbottom’s room the night before, and he stopped for a minute, ignoring the darkness and trying to remember which corridor to take to find the staircase down to the first floor. And then he heard a crash, and the sound of screaming. He clutched his wand, torn between investigating and getting the hell away from that sound, and in his moment of hesitation, Longbottom’s door flew open, and he rushed down the hall, sparing only a moment’s confused glance for Draco. Longbottom stopped three doors down, on the opposite side of the hall, and wrenched the door open. In the dim light, Draco could see Ginny Weasley, curled into a ball in her bed, the pale skin of her bare legs white in the darkness, her red hair hanging in her face. She was sobbing, and screaming, and Draco wanted to leave, but he couldn’t look away.

“Alright, Gin?” he heard Longbottom say, gently, as though talking to a wild animal. “It’s me, it’s Nev.” He went to her, and wrapped his arms around her, and she screamed again, and balled up her fists and began hitting him.

“GET OUT OF ME,” she shrieked, and her voice was unrecognizable, inhuman. A deep fear took hold of Draco, and the fear was a familiar one, the fear of something unholy.

“GET OUT OF ME, GET OUT OF ME.”

She was beating her fists against Longbottom, hitting him in the face and chest and screaming. Longbottom sat, holding her, murmuring “It’s ok, you’re ok,” steady and unflinching, until finally, she clutched him and buried her face against him and sobbed.

Then the floorboards squelched behind him, and he jumped and whipped around, but it was only Lovegood, rushing past as though she hadn’t seen him, and pulling Ginny’s door shut behind her.

He stared at the closed door for a moment, unable to move. Finally, he ripped himself away, and scrambled down the last flight of stairs, across the ground floor and to the kitchen, where he brewed himself an entire pot of tea and sat, clutching a steaming mug. He remembered rumors from his second year, when the Chamber had been opened. His friends had said the ghost of Voldemort himself had possessed her, and he had scoffed at the very idea. What would the Dark Lord have wanted with a blood-traitor like Ginny Weasley? The animal screaming echoed in his mind, _get out of me, get out of me._ She had only been a first year. A little girl. He felt sick.

When Longbottom stumbled through the kitchen door, blinking away sleep, with his uniform shirt hanging half-untucked from his trousers, tripping over the hem of his Auror’s robes, Draco didn’t even bother to swallow the apology.

“Longbottom,” he began, “I’ve judged you rather unfairly for a long time. It was never my place, and I was out of line.”

The image of the man, rock steady, and the dull ‘thud’ of Weasley’s fists against his neck and chest and shoulders echoed in his mind.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	23. Draco Malfoy and the Arithmantic Dilemma

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again. This chapter gets a bit nerdy, so...yeah.

Draco sat at the kitchen table in the semi-darkness, fully awake, listening to Kreacher the house elf snoring gently from his room under the boiler cupboard. He let his mind wander, thinking about rune patterns and Death Eaters and Potter, wherever he was. He wondered about Charlie’s old partner; about what kind of person she’d been. He wondered what Pansy was doing, and Theo and Blaise and Greg. He wondered what his mother was doing, and his father. He wondered if they were OK. He wondered what Charlie would make him do today. And, as though his thoughts had summoned him, Charlie wandered into the kitchen, stretching and yawning loudly, already changed into PT gear.

“Morning sunshine,” Draco said.

“Hey, that’s my line,” Charlie replied with a sleepy smile. “What are you doing up so early? Normally I have to drag you out of bed.”

“Oh, uh…I…woke up to use the loo and couldn’t fall back asleep,” he lied.

Charlie poured himself some tea from Draco’s pot. They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and Draco barely even remembered to be disgusted at Charlie for drinking tea out of a coffee mug.

Finally, Charlie drained his mug and plunked it down.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Yes,” Draco replied firmly, having only decided it then and there. But he _did_ feel ready, he realized. He held an arm out and left his apprehension in the darkened kitchen as they apparated.

When they reappeared at the cliffside meadow, it was in the middle of several feet of snow; and Draco berated himself for not grabbing one of Charlie’s dozens of Weasley sweaters. They were knobbly eyesores, but they were somehow warmer than anything in Draco’s winter wardrobe. Snow was still falling. Charlie stopped for a moment to pull out his wand and hit them both with a warming charm, and Draco twitched at the warmth of Charlie’s autumn-bronze magic washing over his skin.

“Alright,” Charlie said. “First things first. Show me how you throw a punch.”

Draco, as it turned out, did not know how to throw a punch. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even know how to properly hold his fist.

“No, you don’t tuck your thumb under your fingers, Draco, you’ll break it that way. There you are, wrap it around the outside of your knuckles, like that, yeah? OK, see your middle and third knucks? They should be sticking out a bit; when you hit, you hit with those.”

He threw jabs and crosses for what felt like hours.

“No, Draco, you don’t lunge when you strike, it throws you off balance. No, Draco, you’re tucking your thumb in again. Draco. Draco, no.”

By the time the sun was well up into the sky, his shoulders burned, his arms were like lead, his back and chest were on fire, and he still wasn’t exactly sure how to make a fist correctly, and Charlie called him off with an amused grin, shaking his head.

“Should I bother asking how I did?” Draco asked wryly.

“Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you, but the physical forms are only half the battle. We still have to talk about the foundations of meditation before we’re done for the day.”

“But it’s past breakfast,” Draco groaned indignantly.

“Yeah, and it’ll be past lunch if you don’t get on with it.”

“Fine,” Draco grumbled, stomping over to Charlie, who had blasted away a patch of snow for them to sit. He plopped down gracelessly, and Charlie followed with a patience that Draco found irritating.

“Alright,” said Charlie. “I want you to close your eyes and think about your thoughts for me.”

“Think about my thoughts?”

“Yeah. Tell me about them. What are you thinking about right now?”

“Breakfast,” Draco said sourly.

“Alright. What else?”

“What else...” Draco said. “Hmmm. I’m thinking how I must be half mad sitting out here in the snow with a cold arse talking about my feelings. What is the purpose of this, exactly?”

“Meditating has a number of purposes,” Charlie replied calmly. “Right now, you’re examining your thoughts to help you start to become aware of your internal landscape.”

“My…internal landscape. Right.” Draco scoffed.

“Yes. Among other things, it helps you understand yourself. For example, if you were focusing on the exercise instead of whining my ear off, you’d realize that your mood suffers when you’re hungry. You’re allowing the feeling of minor discomfort to influence your tone and mood, which means you’re giving up a degree of your own power.”

Draco opened his eyes and stared at him, perplexed.

“I’m not sitting out here with you because I like hearing myself talk, Draco. Now close your eyes and focus on the exercise,” Charlie said. He had the edge of authority in his voice.

Draco closed his eyes and focused on the exercise.

“Now. Try to make a mental list of everything you’re thinking about. Take some time to listen to your thoughts if you need to. You can tell me what’s on your mind, if you want. Sometimes it’s easier to acknowledge your thoughts if you say them out loud.”

Draco listened to his thoughts.

“I’m sore and cold and hungry,” he said. He let his mind drift. His thoughts were like the snow falling, distant, melting away as soon as he tried to grab them. Something sharp-edged was swirling in the snow, and he realized, suddenly, that he had been occluding. There was a high, white stone wall around the sharpness in his mind, and he let it fall and was surprised to find grief, and worry.

“I miss my mother,” he said, and though his face heated at the admission, he found it surprisingly easy to admit his thoughts to Charlie. “The snow reminds me of her; she used to love the wintertime. She’ll be alone in the Manor at Christmas. I was angry at her, but now I just miss her.”

But the feeling is more complicated than loneliness. He focuses, picking it apart. Guilt. It’s his fault she’s alone. He can’t be the heir to her bloodline. He can only be himself, and he finds that he regrets that.

“That’s alright,” Charlie said. “You’re allowed to miss your mum. Some people try to block out their thoughts, or repress them, but all that usually happens is that the thoughts fight harder to be recognized. Try to sit there with that feeling for a while.”

So Draco did. Guilt reared up in him, like waves, battering him. He could hear Ginny’s voice, twisted, screaming. He had laughed about it. The Dark Lord himself had invaded her body and crept into her mind, and she was just a little girl, and she had been _violated,_ and he had _laughed about it._ It was his father that had given Ginny the Dark Lord’s diary…he hadn’t known what it was, of course, but that didn’t make him any less culpable. He hates that his father did it, but moreso, he hates himself for mocking her. The guilt was a spiral that he followed downward. He could smell ash, and burning, and he could see his own hand, reaching and just barely missing the hem of Vince’s robes as he fell into Fiendfyre. He could hear the sizzling ‘pop’ as his body was consumed. If he had been a split second faster…if he had been smarter, if he had been braver, if he had _just listened to Severus._ If he had just gone to Severus. If he had just set that fucking cabinet on fire.

That wall had been there for a reason, he realized, as guilt wrapped around him and pulled.

“Where’d you go, Draco?”

Charlie’s voice seemed to come from across a great distance. He focused on it, and forced his thoughts into words.

“I…was very unkind. To people who didn’t deserve it. And when my friends needed me, I…”

“When?” Charlie asked. “When you were a boy?”

“Yes,” Draco replied, preparing himself for the “you were only a child, you didn’t mean it” speech.

“Well, that was no excuse,” Charlie said. “You were old enough to know better, and you chose to be cruel anyway.”

Draco gaped at him. Charlie frowned, but not unkindly.

“But you’re not that snotty kid anymore, Draco. The feeling of guilt is serving a purpose. It’s telling you that you hurt other people, and by doing that, you also hurt your own self. It’s telling you to choose differently in the future. Acknowledge it, tell it that you hear it and you understand, and then let it go.”

And Draco closed his eyes again, and felt the guilt.

 _“I know,”_ he told it. _“I know what I did. But I’m not that person anymore. Or at least, I don’t want to be.”_

He felt it ripple and disperse.

“Are you alright?” Charlie asked.

“Yes,” Draco replied.

“We’ll work on that every day after PT, but you can do it whenever. It’s a good habit to get into now, because the closer you get to finding the forms, the more you’ll need to be able to focus your thoughts.”

“Right,” said Draco, feeling fuzzy.

Charlie rose and hauled Draco to his feet.

“Well, come on then. Let’s go get breakfast. We’ve got shopping to do today.”

He wrapped a hand around Draco’s wrist, and they apparated.

When they arrived back at Grimmauld Place, breakfast was already underway. Sirius Black was sitting at the table, shirtless and flushed, eating eggs with delicate grace, while Ginny Weasley, who was in sweaty track clothes, shoveled an omelette into her mouth whole. Lovegood was on the other side of Black, her blond hair plastered to her still-pink face. They must have just come back from their own PT and sat down at the table without washing up. Draco would have been appalled, except that he knew he didn’t look any better than the rest of them.

Charlie sat down beside a bleary-eyed Remus Lupin, and Draco had never seen anything as tired-looking as that man. The full moon was tonight, Draco realized. He was amazed that the man had been able to teach for a full year at Hogwarts; he remembered thinking that Lupin had looked ill from time to time, but nothing like this. He seemed as though he might faint into his plate at any moment. Severus, who was beginning to gain some color, was between Granger, who looked almost as exhausted as Lupin, and Dean Thomas, who had his face buried in what appeared to be an upside-down newspaper. As soon as Granger caught Draco’s eye, she patted the spot beside her, and summoned him a plate and mug. He repressed an errant irritation at her beckoning; _after all, you’re a guest in her home,_ he told himself.

“Coffee or tea?” she asked as he slid in beside her.

“Tea, please.”

She poured the tea straight into the coffee mug, and rolled her eyes impatiently when he drew his wand and transfigured it into a delicate china teacup.

“Sirius and Luna and I have been working on the translations,” she said tiredly. “We think you were right about the binding runes.”

“Of course I was right, Granger,” he said impatiently. “You could’ve saved yourself some time and taken my word for it.”

“If you would let me finish,” Granger snapped, “you would know that we reconfigured the rune patterns to account for binding, and we discovered that the physical object used in the ritual is meant to serve as the vessel for the binding spell, and that the object is the earth itself.”

“What? Someone was trying to bind an intangible element to the earth?”

“Yes- that’s what Arkay’s Third was being used for. They were using the energy from the nearest leyline to stabilize the magic of the earth, not the magic of the caster. It also explains the location; there’s a leyline close to the village.”

Draco looked up to realize that everyone at the table had fallen silent and was listening.

“So what was the rune sequence being used for?” he asked.

“It was part of a ritual,” she replied. “We haven’t identified the intangible element, but we know that the ritual involved some sort of map.”

“A map?”

“Yeah,” Black replied, jumping in. “There were a number of symbols in the sequence that weren’t even runes. We found a combination of hieroglyphs and pictograms. At first we thought somebody had just fucked up, but-”

“But they turned out to be encoded matrices,” Granger interrupted. “In muggle mathematics, a matrix is a rectangular array of numbers or symbols, arranged into rows or columns. The way they’re arranged allows them to be manipulated to create calculable pathways between dimensional vector spaces.”

He stared at Granger, sure that whatever she had just said was in some language other than English.

“What?” he asked.

“Matrices,” Dean Thomas interrupted. “Basically, you can make an “encoding matrix” by assigning numbers or values to an element in a matrix, then multiplying its values by the values in a “message matrix.” The resulting matrix is encoded. You just have to give someone the inverse of the encoding matrix and they’ll be able multiply it by its inverse to recover the message.”

“How do you know about this?” Draco asked incredulously.

“I’m muggleborn, mate. My mum teaches computational mathematics at a muggle university. I took her the rune sequences and she figured it out.”

“How?” Severus asked him, speaking for the first time.

“Oh, I don’t know. I can do basic operations with matrices, but at a certain point, they get over my head. That’s what mum’s for. She can figure out anything,” said Thomas, with obvious pride.

“Anyway, the matrices revealed a series of numbers that we’re almost positive translate to coordinates,” Granger continues. “But the coordinates are arithmantic, in that they reflect the magical properties of the physical location they describe.”

Suddenly, Lupin’s head snaps up. He looks at Black, alarmed.

“Sirius, that’s…”

“The Map. I know. But it’s different,” Black replied. “These coordinates aren’t being used to encapsulate an area in physical space. If I’m right, these coordinates are meant to create a bridge within physical space.”

“A bridge?” Draco cut in.

“Sirius and Hermione think that muggle matrices were modified to work arithmantically,” Luna said, speaking up. “And that the numbers we got from Dean’s mum translate to arithmantic coordinates that, if activated, would transport us to an actual physical location. But the problem is, we would need to work out the coordinates to get back.”

“Well that’s not hard,” Draco said. “Anyone who can cast a _portus_ charm should be able to identify arithmantic coordinates.”

“Oh, it’s so easy, why didn’t I think of that,” Granger growled, muttering under her breath about _“men explaining things.”_

“It’s not that simple,” Luna told him, her expression unusually solemn. “We’ve run through the sequences a dozen times and run a cross-referencing charm against every set of arithmantic coordinates for every geographic identifier. Wherever that location is, it isn’t on this plane of existence.”

The silence in the room was palpable. Finally, realizing that no one was kidding, Draco spoke.

“So what do you plan to do?” he asked.

“Well, we know the coordinates can be activated with a blood ritual, and we know they’ll take us somewhere, and I have a hunch that the somewhere is where Harry and Ron are,” Black said. “And we know the arithmantic coordinates that correspond to Grimmauld Place already. All we need is a pathway back from wherever we end up.”

“That’s impossible,” Draco replied. “Arithmantic pathways operate in a rectangular coordinate system. Another plane of existence would require…”

“Vectors that bend around curves,” Granger supplied

“Vectors?”

“A muggle math thing,” she said. “Anyway, you’re completely right. We don’t have a way of representing an arithmantic pathway in a non-rectangular system.

“But just because we don’t know how to do the arithmancy doesn’t mean it can’t be done,” Black said.

“Right,” she said. “I’m going to rule out one variable. I’m going back to the site after work to check on something. If I don’t find it, we’ll know for certain that our only option is to figure out how to bend pathways in three-dimensional space.”

“I wanna come too,” said Thomas. “I need to get another set of soil samples.”

“Why?” Granger asked him. “Did you get the results back from the police department?”

“Yeah,” said Thomas, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “And here’s the thing. The DNA…wasn’t from a human.”

“Animal sacrifice?” Granger asked, looking horrified. “That’s-”

“No,” said Thomas. “Not human. Not any animal that we could identify. We…have no idea what that blood came from.”

Thomas’ face was troubled. Draco felt his hair stand on end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: For any math-y sorts that I may have offended, I know that a vector can't bend around a curve, and even if it could, it wouldn't describe a path to another plane of existence. Dean and Hermione are the only ones familiar with muggle math, so they're using those ideas as a sort of analogy to try to describe arithmantic principles. All math used in this fic is for entertainment purposes only. Please don't take it seriously :)
> 
> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	24. Draco Malfoy and the Secondhand Shop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Draco chapter for now. Next up, Severus Snape won't stay in bed where he belongs. In the meantime, enjoy Draco hanging out with the Weasleys :)

The midday sun did a great deal to lift the cloud of that morning’s rather unnerving breakfast conversation. The snow had stopped, and though it was still cold, Draco could no longer see his breath in the air. He was freshly showered, bundled into a particularly bulky, navy-blue Weasley sweater, and wedged between Charlie and his sister, who were taking turns imitating their family members in increasingly-wacky voices. Draco had foregone slicking his wet hair back, letting it dry into a bit of a shaggy mess, which Ginny had cooed over, running her fingers through it before he had a chance to duck away. He’d charmed it chestnut-brown, put on a pair of square-framed glasses and glamoured his slate-grey eyes into a less distinctive blue.

He looked nothing like himself, which was necessary not only to avoid being hexed on sight by half of Diagon Alley, but also because the Gringotts account that held his Ministry pay was registered under an alias to maintain the confidentiality of his position. So, he assumed, was Charlie’s, but Charlie already had a pocketful of galleons and muggle cash. The need for a glamour Ginny accepted easily enough, but he wasn’t quite sure how to explain why he was using a fake name. He had hardly expected her to tag along, so he hadn’t come up with an excuse.

_Tax evasion? That sounds plausible._

They climbed the stairs to the gilded doors of Gringotts, and Draco wracked his brain. Finally, Charlie saved him.

“Hey Gin, you wanna go by the coffee shop and pick out a new roast for Neville while Draco’s in the bank?”

“Ooh, good idea!” she said, her face lighting up.

“Alright then. Meet us there?” he asked.

“Sounds good,” Draco said, shooting him a relieved smile.

It wasn’t until he was already in the building that he realized he had no idea how to exchange galleons for muggle money. He looked around the massive, gilded lobby, wondering if he could somehow summon Charlie telepathically, when he caught sight of a familiar face.

Colin Creevey- the boy that had been petrified in second year. He was muggleborn! Emboldened by anonymity, he sidled up behind him in line.

“Er…excuse me,” he said, trying to lower the timbre of his voice. “I uh…I was wondering if you might know anything about muggle currency. I want to buy some clothes for when I go and visit my muggleborn friends, but…”

Creevey smiled widely.

“I’d be happy to help. I’m actually muggleborn myself, you see.”

He was still on the smallish side, but he’d grown up nicely, with thick, curly brown hair and dark, handsome features. He had on a set of semi-formal robes, and a camera hung around his neck. Pinned to his lapel was a badge that read “press” in large block letters, and in a smaller font below, “The Quibbler.”

“Do you know what all you need to buy?” he asked.

_No? I just need it to survive Charlie’s PT._

“Well, I’ll be staying with them for several months, so I need a few sets of clothes,” he began. “I’ll be uh…working outside a lot. Hiking. And jogging. Possibly fist-fighting.”

“Fist-fighting?” Creevey asked, cocking his head with an amused little smile.

“Er, yes- isn’t that something muggles do?”

Creevey threw his head back and laughed.

“No,” he replied, grinning at Draco. “Please don’t ask your muggleborn friends if they want to fist-fight.”

“Oh, er…right.”

“Jogging is OK, though. And hiking is fine.”

As they waited in line, Creevey ran through a list of the best secondhand shops in London, as well as the finer points of muggle fashion (“No, only women wear brassieres…Nylon shorts are fine to wear jogging, but definitely not to go out to a fancy dinner. A wristwatch? Oh, no you’re thinking of a telephone. A wristwatch tells you what time it is…”).

They reached the front of the line, and a goblin waved Creevey over.

“Remember, it’s ten pounds to one galleon,” he said as he walked away. “You can buy a whole new wardrobe for about 50 pounds at a secondhand shop, so five galleons should do it. Good luck with everything. I hope you have fun with your friends.”

He stepped up to the counter and pulled out a pile of galleons and double the amount of muggle bills, just in case, giving Creevey a little wave and a grateful smile as he saw him on his way out of the bank.

He found Charlie and Ginny outside Quality Quidditch Supply. Charlie was carrying a large paper bag with about 4 sacks of coffee beans.

“They had some new flavored coffees, and Ginny couldn’t make up her mind,” he said, by way of explanation.

They went into the shop, and Draco helped Ginny pick out a new pair of chasers’ gloves while Charlie walked around goggling at racing brooms.

“Whoa…a Cleansweep 920? They’ve come a long way since I played…”

“You played Quidditch?” Draco asked.

“Yeah, duh,” Ginny replied. “He was a legend in Gryffindor. Never lost a game the whole time he was on the team.”

“I was alright,” Charlie clarified, his cheeks pinking a bit.

“He could have played for England if he hadn’t dropped out of school and gone chasing dragons,” she said, elbowing him.

“I didn’t _drop out,”_ he grumbled. “I _graduated early.”_

“Which would have given you a whole extra year to play for England if you had any sense,” she retorted.

They began a sort of sustained, low-level bickering that persisted until a group of several girls, Hogwarts-aged, caught sight of Ginny and rushed over, squealing.

“Excuse me, are you Ginny Weasley? I saw you in the match against the Appleby Arrows! That Reverse-Hawkshead Formation was amazing!”

“Could you sign this for us?”

“I’m in Gryffindor too, and I’m trying out for the team next year…do you have any tips?”

Ginny lit up at the sight of them, chattering happily, and before long, a small crowd had gathered around her. Draco watched her, currently miming the drop angle for a Lewiston’s Feint to a little boy who looked positively star-struck, and she seemed to bloom, laughing, joking with the crowd, happily signing broom handles and gloves and bits of paper until everyone dispersed.

“Ugh,” said Charlie said, watching her fondly. “ _That_ is why I didn’t play for England. It happens every time we go anywhere. She handles it like a professional, though.

“I suppose she is a professional,” Draco replied.

“I suppose your right,” Charlie agreed. “It’s odd to think about though. My baby sister is an internationally-famous Quidditch star.”

When they finally escaped, Ginny dragged them into Honeyduke's to pick up some chocolate for Lupin.

“Can’t he buy his own chocolate?” Charlie asked, as she dragged him in by the elbow.

“No,” she said flatly. “He’s about to turn into a werewolf. No, he can’t buy his own chocolate.”

Draco winced as the shoppers around her stared in horror at the mention of “werewolf,” but she glared so fiercely that the would-be gawkers turned quickly back around.

Half of Honeydukes later, they parted ways, and Draco picked up three sets of work robes, two sets of formals, a traveling cloak, a set of heavy winter robes, a pair of high-gloss dress shoes, and a pile of new underpants, which we was rather glad of; he hadn’t been wearing any, and the zippers on Charlie’s muggle jeans were unforgiving.

He examined his heavy, dragon-hide boots, considering purchasing a new pair, but they seemed to be in decent condition, and his pile of galleons was rather diminished. He had a comfortable sum saved from his Ministry checks, but for perhaps the first time ever, he exercised caution. He wasn’t sure he would even be allowed to draw from his family’s account anymore. He would have to make do on his own earnings.

He meandered around for a while, peering into shop windows, enjoying the feeling of walking through the streets anonymously. The Weasleys had gone to visit their brothers’ joke shop, and Draco wasn’t keen on joining them. He stopped in a shop and picked up a new quill and some parchment. He toyed with the idea of sending his mother some fresh flowers, but decided against it. Finally, with nothing better to do, he wandered into Florean Fortescue’s Ice-Cream Parlour, and ran face-first into-

“Greg?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

There was Gregory Goyle, hale and healthy and somehow even taller, wearing light-blue work robes and an apron smeared with chocolate sauce.

“Draco?” he asked, his deep voice cautious and confused. “Is that you?”

“Yes. Shhh. Don’t say my name.”

“Why not? You sound like you, but you don’t look like you.”

“I know that, you dolt,” he snapped. “I’m in disguise. It gives it away if you call me Draco.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Hey Greg-” came a voice from somewhere behind the shop counter. “Where did you put the extra tub of strawberry frosting, I…”

A familiar-looking girl appeared beside Greg, smiling prettily. She was short and a bit stocky, with a long, brown ponytail, bright blue eyes, and a sweet, dimpled face.

“Hi there! Are you a friend of Greg’s?”

“Ellie, this is Draco…er, I mean this is _not Draco._ Definitely not Draco. This is, uh…”

“Hi,” Draco said, stifling a sigh. He turned to her and bowed politely. “I’m Draco. Please excuse my appearance. I’m…auditioning for a part in a play. Always have loved the theatre, you see.”

The girl stiffened immediately.

“Draco…Malfoy? You er…might not remember me. I’m Ellie…Eloise. Eloise Midgen. I was a Hufflepuff…we had some classes together.”

Her face had blushed nearly scarlet, and she seemed to be trying to shrink into the floor. After another glance, Draco placed her as a stuttering, acne-riddled girl, who he remembered, with an unexpected flash of shame, that he had mocked rather cruelly. He felt the immediate, sharp tug of his oath.

“Miss Midgen. I do remember you, and I’d like to offer you my apologies for the way I behaved toward you at school. I acted appallingly, and I’m truly sorry. I can only hope that you will not allow my past immaturity to color your opinion of me at the present,” he said, falling back on long-bred, stiff formality.

“Well that’s…all water under the bridge, isn’t it,” she said, smiling again. “It’s lovely to see one of Greg’s friends. He goes on and on about you lot, you know.”

Draco smiled widely at her, genuinely pleased, and then at Greg, who was watching him with a concerned look.

“Would you like a tour of the shop? Greg, why don’t you show Draco around? Mr. Fortescue’s on a business trip, but he won’t mind. He loves for people to take a look.”

Greg grunted his assent, and Draco followed him back behind the counter and through a set of swinging doors. The space was expansive. Shelves lined the walls, and every shelf was laden with clear glass jars of sweets. There were gummy candies, shaved chocolate, strawberries floating in syrup, powdered sugar, and every flavor of sprinkles imaginable. Draco saw fruits he had never heard of, and candy he hadn’t seen since he was a boy.

In the center of the room were dozens of massive cauldrons, with ingredients hovering above them, and giant, oar-sized paddles charmed to churn and mix.

Eloise was reaching up to fetch a tray of waffle cones from a top shelf, standing on her tiptoes, and Greg rushed over to reach them for her, handing them down with a soft sort of expression. Draco smiled. He’d never seen Greg look smitten. It was a good look on him, he decided.

“Greg’s been working a new flavor,” she said, resting the edge of her tray on her hip. “Why don’t you show him, Greg?”

Greg looked a bit abashed, but padded over obediently, and pulled out his wand. He took aim at a cauldron of plain vanilla, and with a flourish, a deep, inky color spilled from the tip of his wand. There were lights in the blue, sparkling, and Draco watched as a vat of plain ice cream turned into an astronomically-accurate picture of the night sky. He could pick out the constellations, winking brightly in their bed of dark blue. It was a truly lovely bit of magic, and he looked over at Greg, whose face was screwed up in concentration, with a startled sort of pride.

Eloise dipped a ladle into the vat and began scooping it into her cones.

“We’re calling it “Constellation Cream.” Free samples all day today,” she said with a wink as she carried her tray back to the front.

“So, Greg,” he said, shooting his friend a sly smile. “You and Eloise Midgen, yeah?”

“Er…yeah,” Greg said, shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably. “Sorry I didn’t tell you…er…well, actually, no one knows where you’ve been, so I guess I couldn’t have told you. But, uh…”

“Oh my God, Greg, spit it out,” he said, rolling his eyes.

 _“She’s muggleborn,”_ he yelped. “Ellie is…I mean. She’s, uh…not a pureblood.”

Draco froze, staring at Greg in shock. But after a moment, he realized he didn’t care. He would rather have Greg happy with a muggleborn girl than see him suffer through decades of lonely animosity in some society marriage.

“She’s lovely,” Draco said.

“But you said…that mudbl…that uh…mud…muggleborns. You said muggleborns are dirty animals.”

“I…said a lot of things, Greg. But that girl out there? She doesn’t seem dirty to me, or like an animal. She’s a lovely girl, Greg. Let’s just…let what I said in the past stay there.”

“You mean you aren’t cross?”

“Hardly. I’ve just told you, I think she’s sweet.”

“Me too,” he replied, with a tiny smile. “Er…Draco?”

“Yes?”

“Where’ve you been? You’ve been gone for a year. Everyone’s been looking for you. Pansy’s gone half mad worrying.”

Draco sighed. “Alright, if I tell you, you can’t tell _anyone._ Especially not Pansy. I’ve taken an apprenticeship. With Charlie Weasley.”

“With a _Weasley?!”_ Greg exclaimed.

“Yes, with a Weasley. He’s quite a good mentor, and believe me, no one was as surprised as I was. I’ve been studying with him on a dragon’s sanctuary in Romania, but we’re starting a new job at the London Menagerie soon, so I’m staying with his family for now.”

“Wait,” Greg said slowly. “You mean you live with the _Weasleys,_ and you’re telling me I can’t tell Pansy?”

“Yes! Or anyone. Daphne already knows, but I’ve sworn her to secrecy.”

“But Draco, uh…why not?”

“Because my name is a curse. You, Pans, Theo, Blaise…you all still have a hope of rebuilding your lives, but the Malfoy name is ruined. You don’t need to be seen associating with me. I’ll only drag you down.”

“But-”

“No “buts,” Greg. I can’t even be seen in public without being ridiculed. Why else do you think I’m in this disguise?”

“Er- because you’ve always loved the theatre?”

“Greg, no. It’s because I can’t even go out without being hexed in the back. I need you guys to keep your distance from me. It’s for your own good.”

“But-”

“No, Greg.”

“Alright, Draco.”

“Good,” he said, letting out a breath. “Listen, I’ve got to get going. But I’m really glad you’re well.”

He pushes back through the doors. Ellie Midgen is handing out the last of her samples to a herd of excited children, and she really is lovely, Draco thinks, muggleborn or not.

“Miss Midgen,” he says, bowing again. “It was so nice to meet you again, and under better circumstances. Greg. Miss Midgen. Take care.”

He turns from Greg’s doleful expression and half-throws himself outside, wiping surreptitiously at the corners of his eyes.

He finds two Weasleys, plus an extra, sitting at a table outside a little café. Ginny sees him, and waves him over excitedly.

“There you are, Draco. We’re just finishing coffee, but we saved you a pastry.”

She shoves a chocolate croissant at him, and he takes it, eyeing it suspiciously.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t let George anywhere near it,” she says, glaring severely at a twin. Her skin seems to have a slight bluish tinge, Draco notices. George looks unabashed.

The Weasleys gather their bags, and he follows them. It seems strange to see one twin without the other. Ginny, he notes, seems to cling to George’s side, stopping now and then to tug on the sleeve of his robe and point at something, or lean over and whisper a joke. He picks up his pace to fall into step beside Charlie, eating his croissant, which thankfully does not make him turn blue.

“Where are we going now?” he asks.

“We’re going to head into muggle London. There’s a couple shops near here; we can just walk so we don’t have to take the Underground.”

“What’s the Underground?”

“It’s how muggles get around. It’s remarkable, really, but hard to navigate. I get lost when I ride it.”

_Ride it? Like…some kind of animal?_

Draco spends the next three blocks trying to imagine muggles climbing onto the back of some giant, horse-like creature that lives beneath the earth, and finally decides that Charlie must be having him on.

“Here we are,” he calls to Ginny and George, who have gotten further ahead.

The shop window is filled with junk; soup tureens and tea kettles and brass candlesticks, a large, cherry-red feathered hat, a painting of a toucan perched amid a verdant canopy. Charlie pushes the door open, and Draco follows him in skeptically.

Inside, the shop was an explosion of color. Muggles, it seemed, had no appreciation for a neutral color palette. Ginny wandered in, and immediately plopped the feathered hat on George’s head. George made a beeline for an eggplant-colored leotard with a ring of bright purple tulle lace and thrust it at Ginny, who held it up and twirled around. Draco looked at Charlie. Charlie shrugged.

“Alright then. What all do we need?”

He grabbed a large, metal basket that had been mounted on wheels, and began pushing it in front of him. There was a clerk, a middle aged woman with short, frizzy grey hair and a petulantly bored expression, sitting on a stool behind a till and swatting at a bug with a rolled-up newspaper.

“Excuse me, madam,” said George, sidling up to the counter and tipping the feathered hat with a flourish. “Where might we find gentlemen’s things in this fine establishment?”

She glowered at his and brandished her newspaper in the direction of a far wall, where Draco could see a mannequin wearing a jumper and trousers.

“Many thanks,” he said, and held out his arm for Ginny, who grabbed it by the elbow. Draco gawked around as he followed them.

“What are those for?” he asked, pointing at a long, hollow tube full of thin, vaguely weapon-shaped metal bars.

“Those are golf clubs,” Charlie replied. “Muggles use them like beater’s bats, but the balls they hit are tiny, like the size of a plum. They hit them off of cliffs, and try to land them in pits of sand.”

“No they _don’t,”_ Ginny chided. “They start out standing in pits, and they’re trying to hit the ball _out_ of the sand.”

“Actually,” George cut in, “they put the balls on tiny, thin pegs to get them up off the ground, then they hit them with the clubs to try to get them into little holes, about the size of grapefruits.”

“Don’t mind George, he’s having you on.”

“No, I’m not!”

“Oh come on George, like anyone’s going to believe that.”

They came to the wall of men’s clothing, and Ginny and George fell immediately to bickering over which ancient jumper looked the most like something Remus would wear.

“Well, I figure you’re about the same size as Billy in jeans,” Charlie said, piling several pairs of jeans into the basket. Draco pulled down three plain t-shirts at random, two black and one hunter-green. Ginny found one that had a picture of four men crossing a street. Charlie found one with the sleeves cut off, bearing a picture of a koala bear on a surfboard and the words “Far Out, Man.” George found one that said “Blow Me” below a picture of a trumpet, which Draco snuck back onto the rack as soon as he turned away.

They found him black slacks and button-front shirts, an admittedly handsome blazer, and several ties, including one covered in bananas that Ginny would not let him put back. They unearthed a black wool peacoat, a pair of patent leather shoes, new trainers, which were “like work boots, but more comfortable,” Charlie told him. They found a jumper with a hood on it, some “sweatpants,” which Draco intended to wash the second he got home, several long-sleeved flannel shirts, and a pair of pajamas with little green cactuses all over them, which Ginny had giggled so madly over that Draco finally relented and put them in the basket.

Ginny found Charlie a rather motheaten black leather jacket, which looked alarmingly good on him once he had repaired it with a surreptitious flick of his wand, a pink lawn flamingo for the window of Fred and George’s shop, a special heating lamp for Wilbur the snake, and a stack of paperback novels for Dean.

George found a pinstriped bowler hat and a matching purple suit for Fred, a Hawaiian-print shirt for Percy, a horrendously gaudy painting of a bunch of tiny hummingbirds, hovering over flowers for Luna, and a lovely, lilac-colored ball gown for Ginny that she insisted she’d never wear.

While they bickered in triplicate over what bit of junk to drag home for which family member, Draco roamed about the store, picking up objects at random.

“What are these for?” he asked, picking up a rectangular sleeve from the top of a stack and wincing as a large, black disk slid out and clattered to the ground.

“Careful. Those are records,” Ginny said.

“But what are they _for?”_

“They play muggle music,” she replied. “Turn it over.”

He turned over the sleeve.

“Glenn Miller and his Orchestra,” he read. “Oh, come off it. There’s no way muggles fit an entire orchestra in this thin little thing,” he said.

He shook the record.

“See?”

“It doesn’t play the music unless you have a record player, _duh.”_

“It’s true,” George piped up. “The records have little ridges in them, see? When the needle on a record player runs over them, it makes waves of sound that are pushed into a hollow chamber that amplifies them. That’s how you hear the music that’s recorded on them.”

“Stop trying to pull our legs, George,” Ginny said, rolling her eyes. “Remus has a record player. If you want that record, I can show you how to play it.”

“Alright.”

He could almost hear his father, snapping _“put down that muggle nonsense, Draco.”_ He tossed the record into the cart.

By the time they made it back to Grimmauld Place, the afternoon was beginning to fade, and the temperature was dropping. They trudged inside, shivering and tracking in damp snow, and almost as though someone had flipped a switch, Ginny’s mood took an abrupt dive. The chipper, goofy, smiling girl from Diagon Alley was pacing with clenched fists, staring off into the middle distance.

Not for the first time, Draco noticed the whole house seemed to thrum with tension. Finally, as they sat down to dinner, she seemed to settle a bit, laughing as Fred and Lovegood took turns levitating bits of chocolate into Lupin’s mouth.

There were empty spaces; Longbottom had likely been called in for duty, and Granger and Thomas had gone to poke around where they thought Potter and Weasley had disappeared, and it seemed emptier without Granger’s head of bushy hair poring over a stack of parchment, stabbing at her food without looking. Draco looked over to Severus, but he couldn’t catch his eye. Whatever had gotten into them seemed to have gotten into Severus, too. He sat stiffly, as though boring a hole into the wooden tabletop with his gaze. He supposed the Grimmauld household was worked up about the missing boys, but he wondered what was wrong with Severus. It was strange to see him project anything but calm.

Then, abruptly, Lupin leapt up from the table. He shot a single, tired glance at Black.

“It’s time,” he said.

Black rose, and followed him from the room, his body pressed close to Lupin’s side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	25. Severus Snape and the Wolf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh, some stuff happens. Snape gets hurt again. This is the first of several turning points. OMG I feel like it took so long to get here :D

He had only just begun to feel well again, when he realized he was actually going to spend a full moon in a confined space with a werewolf. He had almost gotten up to leave half a dozen times as the daylight waned. But a morbid part of him wanted to see it. He’d spent so many years waking in terror, the memory of wandlight glinting off of bone-white teeth driving him from rest. He’d always been afraid of them, irrationally so, the way some people lay awake at night, paralyzed by fears of drowning, or being buried alive. He’d been terrified of the idea of losing control of himself, of being reduced to a slavering beast. The fear struck him as ironic. For a time, he’d been mindless, a vicious animal. He wondered if the creature would recognize its kin.

He followed a solemn procession to the third-floor library, aware of the distinct silence caused by a strong silencing charm. Was the animal howling? Was it raking its claws against the walls? Was it ripping down curtains and destroying sofas?

But of course, it wasn’t doing any of these things. It had taken its Wolfsbane potion like it was supposed to, he reminded himself. It was completely harmless.

And after they had kindled a fire in the hearth and sat staring into it for a time, the creature crept in behind them, followed by a large, black dog. He froze, gripping the end of his wand, knuckles white, heart pounding an inhuman rhythm. It walked right past him, wagging its tail, and plopped its head in Ginny’s lap.

He let out a breath as she hugged it.

“Hi Moony,” she said, scratching its furry ears. “Hi Padfoot.”

He took a long look, and found that it looked almost identical to a regular wolf, though quite a bit bigger. Its coat was a shiny, tawny brown. It rolled over on its side, showing a snow-white undercoat and a flash of pink belly. Lovegood had crawled down on the floor and was scratching both animals, who were belly-up, kicking their legs, because of course she was. Charlie had a certain kind of curiosity written across his face that Severus had long learned to recognize in Gryffindors because it tended to precede them doing something stupid.

And there it was. Now Charlie was petting the werewolf. Draco, he was pleased to note, was the only one who had not taken leave of his senses, and was scooting away slowly. The great, scruffy black dog came and rested his head on Severus’ knee, looking up at him appealingly.

“What do you want, Black? If you think I’m going to scratch your ears, you’re mad,” he said, as he buried his fingers in the dog’s curly fur. Black rolled his head to the side, thumping his tail, and he found himself scratching Black’s ears in spite of himself.

The wolf was watching him, and somehow, its expression seemed so much like Remus Lupin that he almost forgot what he was looking at. Before he could stop himself, he reached out and brushed its fur with just the tips of his fingers, and that was all it took, apparently, to end up with a werewolf halfway in his lap.

“He’s surprisingly soft,” he said to Draco, who was staring at him as though he were the Giant Squid. George, who had turned up for dinner without his twin, was smiling wryly at him.

“I didn’t know you liked dogs, Professor,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t I like dogs, Mr. Weasley?”

“Well, I didn’t think you liked anything much, sir.”

Severus blinked at him, suddenly off balance.

He could hear his own echo, from across the decades. _“He doesn’t like anything much.”_

But before he could pursue his thoughts any further, a figure burst from the library’s fireplace, doubled over, gasping.

“It’s Hermione.”

Longbottom, in rumpled Auror’s robes, straightened up.

“Something out there…muggles dying,” he choked out, panting for breath. “Half the Aurory is on it…got a patronus…from Hermione. Whatever it is, it came after her and Dean.”

“What happened to her?” Ginny cried, leaping to her feet.

“Don’t know. It was hard to understand…sounded like they were running. I’ve got to get back to my post. Listen, you’ve got to go after them. Robards won’t let us leave the village.”

“Right,” she said, whipping out her wand.

“Wait,” said Longbottom, gazing around the room as if noticing the rest of them for the first time. “Be careful. Whatever’s out there… it’s not just killing muggles. It’s ripping them apart.”

And then, he left, diving back through the fireplace. Black-the-dog was now Black-the-man. He strode across the room and put a hand heavily on Lovegood’s shoulder.

“Luna. Keep him here.”

The wolf planted its front paws and growled at Black.

“Why?” she said, eyes narrowing.

“Listen Luna, it’s the full moon and _you heard Neville._ Something’s ripping people apart. The whole village is going to be crawling with Aurors, they’ll kill him the second they lay eyes on him. _Keep him here,”_ he said, levelling a glare back at the wolf. “Ginny and I are going to find them.”

“You can’t possibly think you’re going to take _Ginny_ with you!” Charlie growled.

“Alright then,” Black replied mildly. “You get to be the one to try to stop her.”

They both looked at Ginny. Her wand was trained on Charlie, her eyes blazing.

“I know better, mate. I try to leave her behind, she’ll hex me into the floor,” Black said.

George had already joined her, looking worried, but resolute.

“Stay here, Moony,” said Black, glaring at the wolf again. It whined, surging forward and pressing its whole body against Black’s knees. “We’ll be fine. We’ll find them and come straight back. Nothing to it.”

“Wait!” Charlie cried, jumping up and reaching out an arm. “If you’re going, I’m going.”

“Fine,” Ginny replied. “But stay out of my way. The second you try telling me to stay back or get behind you, I’m petrifying you.”

In the same instant that Ginny grabbed her brother’s arm, Draco leapt up and dived at them, managing to catch hold of Charlie just as they apparated. Severus stared at the empty spot, where Draco had stood only a moment before, in shock. His godson, charging foolishly _into a den of werewolves_ to go on a _damned rescue mission…_ what had these people done to the boy?

“Black,” he said, rising and extending his arm. “Take me with you.”

Black stared at him.

“No! You’re mad!”

“There’s no time to argue, Black.”

“Absolutely not. You’ve only just healed enough to walk about the house without hurting yourself. You’re my patient, Snape, you’re mad if you think I’m going to-”

“Black, _please!_ Draco is out there!”

“Yes, and we’ll look after-”

“ _He’s my godson, Black._

Black sighed deeply.

“Oh, fuck, fine. Come on, then.”

He grabbed Severus by the hand, and they twisted through space.

When they landed, he found himself in a familiar field. He looked over to the others. Ginny shot him a wry smile, then stared resolutely into the inky blackness of the woods beyond the clearing.

“How are we supposed to find them without Remus?” she asked.

“There’s more than one way to track someone,” he said, grinning. “You lot will have to keep up!”

And with that, his form twisted into nothingness and reappeared in the shape of a great, black dog. He put his nose to the ground, and for a few minutes, he ran back and forth, snuffling in the dirt. Then, he froze for a moment and took off, a blur in the night. They ran after him in a cluster, jogging for a beat then stopping as he trailed back to pick up his scent. Severus realized the foolishness of his actions immediately; within the first mile of running, he could feel a wetness in the rasp of his breath. He coughed into his hand, and it came away red. Still, he followed them deeper into the woods, until even the bright red heads of the Weasley children had faded into the dark. He could hear them, panting as they ran, feet pounding against the wet earth, but he could no longer make out which direction to run after them. The black woods seemed to loom in on him, and he felt a curl of fear.

_How am I supposed to follow a black dog in the dark?_

Then, there was a flash of red and a cry, and in the momentary light, he saw a head of red hair topple to the ground. He whipped out his wand.

 _“Lumos,”_ he muttered. Light sprang, and then dispersed, as though swallowed by the darkness.

 _“Lumos!”_ he cried. “ _Lumos!”_

Nothing. There was some magic interfering with the light...a variation on the Curse of Endless Night, from the look of it.

Another spell-flash. He looked around wildly, but all he could make out was the fluttering hem of a robe. Somewhere ahead of him, he could hear them speaking, voices raised in alarm, and he stumbled toward the sound, ignoring the pinching in his belly and chest.

He resisted the instinct to call out to them, wary of revealing his location; if he couldn’t see whatever was attacking them, it couldn’t see him either.

There was a scream, and an animal snarl. _Black?_

He forced himself to pick up the pace, running blindly toward the noise. Then, the clouds broke and the cold moon poured out its light, and Severus saw it. A flash of bone-white teeth, and gleaming, yellow eyes. It crouched, as if to spring, and he stepped back and stumbled. He could feel his arms flailing in circles in the open air as he fell. He hit the ground. His wand slipped from his hand. And the impact jarred something loose in his chest. He gasped, and coughed a wet, red cough. The animal descended, and somewhere a hazy part of his mind expected James Potter’s hand to come reaching out of the darkness and haul him back at any moment.

Then, something streaked past him and collided with the wolf, snarling and snapping, and it was Black. Black had thrown the wolf back, and they were circling one another, heads low to the ground. The wolf sprang, and Black leapt back. He was trying to lead it away, Severus realized, his fear finally piercing through the fog of pain. He groped for his wand. The wolf sprang again, and they were a blur of vicious snarling, until finally, the beast’s sheer size won out, and it slammed Black to the ground.

 _God._ It had Black by the neck, shaking him, clawing at his belly. Its muzzle was stained red, and Black was yelping, shrieking. _God. It’s killing him._

He staggered to his knees, searching desperately for his wand. Finally, it dropped Black’s limp body and whipped around, running at him. Abandoning his search, he gathered his magic, and let a cutting curse fly wandlessly, and the animal was thrown back, bleeding, but it rose. Over the animal’s shoulder, about 20 yards away, another pair of eyes appeared, gleaming in the dark. He gagged, choking back a fit of coughing. He knew something important, something that could help them, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. The animal was joined by not one, but three companions, and they huddled close for a moment, then broke away, fanning out behind their wounded packmate.

It surged forward again, and out of the corner of his eye, Severus saw a gleam of silver, and Black was back up, forepaws planted, shivering in pain but snarling a warning.

“Run, Black. They’re not after you. Run!”

If Black heard him, he didn’t respond.

“Run, you idiot! Please…”

He groped for his wand again, his fingers skating over stones and twigs and damp earth. And then, just as the pack began to close in on them in tandem, Severus heard the sound of a rhythmic pounding… _hoofbeats?_

Out of the night came a great ball of flame in the shape of an animal, and he knew that shape. A ram. It pawed at the ground with a flaming hoof, lowered its head, and charged, and something woke up in him. _Fire! Yes! They fear the fire!_

Finally, his fingers bumped something familiar; the little spark that reached out for him was his own magic. His wand! He threw a jet of flame after the ram, and the beasts backed away, wary. The ram cantered around them.

“Black! Where are you?”

He could hear whimpering over the rasp of his own labored breathing, and he crawled toward it until he touched wet fur, sticky with drying blood.

Another blur, and another wolf, sleek and tawny brown. Lupin!

He ran at the pack, charging them, forcing them closer together. He was herding them, Severus realized.

Then he heard footfalls, and Luna Lovegood sprinted past, wand raised.

“Remus, get back,” she cried.

The ram flickered and winked out of existence, and Lupin leapt away. Flame shot from the tip of her wand, and she bent it, wrapping the animals in a ring of fire. Moments later, George Weasley, dirty and bleeding, appeared beside her, casting a high arch of fire over her ring, then another, until they had created a cage of flames.

“Severus, lay still,” Lovegood ordered. “You’ve injured yourself again.”

Lupin was nudging Black, whining low in the back of his throat.

“He’ll be alright, Remus. He’s hurt, but it won’t kill him.”

She dropped her flame charm, and Weasley picked it up easily, holding the cage together with his wand aloft.

“Stay a dog until I’m done, Sirius,” she said, crouching beside him, her wand glowing with a white light.

Severus could hear the squelching sound that he had long ago come to know as the sound of a deep wound knitting itself shut by magic.

“You lost a bit of blood, so you’ll be lightheaded until we can get a blood replenisher in you, but fortunately these are all punctures and lacerations. Easy as cake.”

He could hear new voices, and he forced himself to focus, listening for-

_Draco!_

A second later, Draco’s blond head appeared above him.

“Severus! Are you all right? What are you doing here, you’re meant to be healing!”

Severus coughed weakly.

“Lovegood! Why aren’t you helping him? He’s dying!”

“Because I need Sirius, but Sirius can’t do magic when he’s a dog bleeding to death on a forest floor,” Luna replied, looking at Draco as if he were thick.

“Is he alright?” Another voice. Charlie.

“He will be,” said Black, once again a man.

He looked up, and Draco’s face was replaced by Lovegood, and a pale, shaking Black.

“Alright, Snape. You know the drill.”

For a second time, he feels the surge of a tide of unfamiliar magic. A dark pool, deep grief, loneliness. But this time, he’s not afraid. Silvery shapes surround him, and he’s safe. The magic is almost friendly now. He smells engine oil, and cigarette smoke. He hears the sound of laughter. Someone is holding his hand, and he squeezes, the way he used to squeeze his mother’s hand, and he knows it isn’t her, but he still smiles when someone squeezes back.

For a while, he floats on the edge of a dream, drifting in an out of sleep.

“…have to take him into custody as well…given the nature of these attacks…” says a strange voice.

“Take one more step and I’ll throw this wand down and kill you with my bare hands,” Black growls.

“He hasn’t committed a crime,” says Hermione Granger. “If you take him into custody without probable cause, you’ll be in violation of the Lycanthrope’s Right to Personhood Act of 1993, subsection 42, clause 3b…”

“Stand down, Donohue. You too, Black. Remus Lupin is a war hero, Donohue, and you’ll treat him with the respect he deserves or you’ll turn in your robes right now…”

“Yes, Minister Shacklebolt, sir.”

“Now get out of my sight.”

“Yes, Minister Shacklebolt, sir.”

“…not an isolated incident, Miss Granger. After the attacks on the Finnegans and both Patil sisters, it stands to reason…being targeted. Keep your eyes open. Travel in pairs. _Constant vigilance.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	26. Severus Snape and the Hand in His Own

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Severus. He keeps getting hurt.

Severus was jostled back into consciousness to find an apologetic-looking Charlie Weasley depositing him onto a sofa.

“Sorry, Severus! You slipped a bit…there you are,” he said, propping Severus up and easing him back against a cushion. “Just hang tight for a bit, Luna wants a look at you, then it's off to bed with you.”

He blinked and looked around, recognizing the library. Black was slumped in a chair across from him, somehow shirtless again, his hand fisted into Remus Lupin’s fur as Lovegood prodded him in the ribs. He hissed sharply, and Lupin whined.

“Honestly, Sirius, you’re just fine,” she huffed. “Drink your blood replenisher. I swear, healers make the worst patients.”

Severus sighed, surprised at his own relief. 

“Will you make it, Black?” he jabbed.

“Et tu, Brutus?” Black replied, flashing him a grin.

“Tell me, Black, do you ever bother to wear clothes?”

“When I look like this?” he said, gesturing at himself. “It would be a crime.”

Severus barked out a short laugh that was abbreviated by a hiss of pain.

“Still full of yourself, I see. It’s a wonder anyone else can fit in the room with your ego in here,” he shot back, but there was no heat in it.

Black flipped him a lazy bird.

The drapes were open, and he could see the night fading into the grey of morning. Lovegood finished her ministrations over Black and turned to him.

“You,” she said firmly, hands on her hips, “are going to stay in bed and rest _until you’re healed.”_

She began prodding him with the lighted tip of her wand.

“Tell me if anything starts to feel cold.”

A moment later, Severus saw Lupin freeze, stock-still, and stagger away from Black towards the door.

“Oh, dear,” Lovegood muttered. “I hardly noticed. It’s already dawn.”

There was a horrific cracking, and Lupin collapsed, yelping, howling, bellowing in pain. There was another crack, and Severus saw white shards of fractured bone burst from the surface of the animal’s stretching skin. Black rose and staggered over, scooping it into his arms. His face was buried against its receding fur, and it was shrieking and shrieking.

“What’s happening?” Charlie cried, leaping to his feet.

“Leave them be,” she said. “He’s only transforming.”

Severus stared, transfixed, as the claws and fangs receded into angry gashes in the beast’s skin, and the elongated snout was sucked back into its skull with a sickening snap. The pad of the paws flattened, and the digits crunched outward into fingers, forelegs lengthening into arms. Charlie had grabbed hold of his wrist and was squeezing it, his eyes wide. After another moment, the fur was sucked back into his skin, and Lupin was again a man, covered in more old and puckered scars than seemed possible across his arms, and chest, and belly. He was shivering. Severus could see the wet tracks of tears streaking down his face, and Black was cradling his naked body tight against his tattooed chest, whispering and rocking him as he moaned the deep, animal moan of pain.

“Come on,” Lovegood said, her face tight.

And before he could regain enough of his wits to protest, Charlie had scooped him up and was carrying him, bridal-style, out of the room.

“Weasley!” he barked, as soon as they reached the third-floor landing, “Put me down!”

Lovegood whipped around with glare so sharp and so uncharacteristic on her face that Severus was stunned into silence.

“Charlie. Do _not_ put Severus down. Severus is to _lay flat on his back until morning,_ or else all his organs will shift around and he’ll _die.”_

“Er…sorry, Severus,” Charlie muttered into his ear as he carried him down the stairs after her.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped, wriggling free from Charlie’s grasp.

His knees buckled the second his feet hit the floor. Lovegood, with a supremely unamused look, whipped out her wand and levitated him. Feeling rather defeated, he let his floating body go lax, and was carried to his room through the air and deposited on his bed.

“Now _stay in bed,”_ she said, and then, to Charlie, “I’ve got to go collect Dean and Ginny, the Aurors apparated them to St. Mungo’s, and they won’t release them unless it’s to another healer. If he starts to feel cold at any point within the next ten minutes, send me a Patronus immediately.”

“Right,” Charlie said, tipping her a little salute as she turned on her heel and disappeared.

Severus rolled onto his side, and Charlie plopped on the edge of the bed uninvited, pulling his feet up and tucking them under his thighs, cross-legged. He was barefooted, Severus noticed. There was a tattoo of a cluster of stars on the top of his left foot, but it wasn’t a constellation that he recognized. The stars shimmered. A magical tattoo, then. Severus wiggled his own toes and realized he was barefooted too, and he wondered if Charlie had been the one to pull off his boots and socks.

“Does he go through that…every time the moon is full?” Charlie asked, looking down at Severus with a strange sort of discomfort on his face.

“I suppose he does,” he replied tiredly.

“You know, I always knew lycanthropy was…bad. But…in an abstract way, you know? I never realized…Severus, his bones were breaking…”

“I know,” Severus replied. He threw up walls of black stone in his mind, occluding the cracking and the tearing of flesh and the bellowing, animal agony that was ripped from the wolf’s throat, and the sight of Black, clutching him and rocking him, head buried against him as though he could make them both disappear that way.

Charlie picked at the fraying hem of his shirt, staring at the floor, and Severus left him to his thoughts, studying him through sleepy eyes. His hair was a longish, curly mop, that just touched his ears. He had a massive, shiny burn scar on his left arm that Severus hadn’t remembered seeing when he had visited during the Tournament. He wore a plain green muggle t-shirt, which was tight around his arms, and indeed, tight around all of him. Whatever he had been doing since he left school, he had been doing a lot of it; his body had gained a hardness that could come only from physical labor. He could see the edge of more inkwork peeking out from under his right sleeve, and another just above his shirt collar, and Severus found himself suddenly intensely curious about what they were, but he could think of no way to ask that wouldn’t sound suggestive, so he occluded that too. His jeans were faded, fraying, ripped at the knees, so worn they looked to be held together mostly by magic. He could see the fine, coppery hairs on Charlie’s pale kneecaps and the smattering of freckles on the skin of his legs through the holes in the jeans. His thoughts began to blur together, and he felt hazy, and thick with sleep.

After a time, Charlie rose and pulled a plush blanket from the foot of the bed up over him, lifting his head gently to fluff his pillow. He seemed to recall being in this position before.

“You’re not going to kiss me goodnight, are you?” he asked.

He opened his heavy eyes to find that Charlie’s face was rapidly turning scarlet.

“Er- did you want me to…?”

He drifted off, wondering what had made Charlie blush so, and just before he was claimed by sleep, he felt the ghost of something warm brush his forehead.

When he awakened, he was shivering so violently, and in so much pain, that he thought that he might scream from it. He forced himself into a sitting position, biting back a cry.

There was a stirring from across the room, and he saw Charlie sleeping, sitting upright, on a sofa beneath a large casement window, with one arm wrapped tightly around Draco, who was leaning into his shoulder. Daylight was pouring in around the curtains, and Severus judged it to be almost noon. Draco stirred at the sound of him shifting, opened his eyes, and immediately struggled to free himself from Charlie, who snored loudly and gripped him tighter.

“Charlie get _off…_ or I’ll call your sister, I swear…”

Finally, Draco wrenched himself loose and struggled upright, catching sight of Severus for the first time.

“Severus!” he said, rushing over. “Are you alright? Lovegood said you were hurt! I’m sorry I wasn’t there, I got dragged to St. Mungo’s with Dean Thomas. Are you cold? Lovegood said to ask if you were cold-”

“I know what Lovegood said,” he ground out. “What are you two doing in my room?”

“Er…we didn’t want to leave you alone. Charlie was worried about you.”

“Charlie was, was he?” Severus replied, raising an eyebrow. “And speaking of Charlie, what were you thinking, Draco? Chasing him into a den of wolves.”

And then, something hardened in the boy’s gaze.

“I’m Charlie’s apprentice. I go where Charlie goes. And what do you mean, _what was I thinking?_ What were _you_ thinking?! You’re _injured!_ Why did you go chasing after us?”

“Draco,” he said tiredly. “You are my _godson._ You are my _responsibility.”_

“I’m an adult, Severus,” he snapped. “I’m no one’s responsibility anymore.”

“You do not understand, Draco. You will _always_ be my responsibility.”

“No-”

 _“Yes,_ Draco. _Always.”_

Draco stilled, resting his hand on Severus’ shoulder, smoothing his robes down unnecessarily, gripping him by the elbow. He had known the boy long enough to recognize that Draco was struggling not to cry, and that it was a lost cause because the boy was entirely too emotional, and cried at the drop of a hat. He remained silent, knowing that anything further he said out loud would likely send him into a fit of tears, and then he would cling to Severus, who was never quite sure what to do in that situation, of whether he was supposed to hold onto the boy or tell him to straighten up and carry himself with some dignity.

“Severus?”

“Yes, Draco?”

“Are you cold? You’re shaking.”

“I’m not cold, Draco, no."

"Severus?”

"Yes, Draco?"

"Are you in any pain?"

"I am, a bit."

“Oh God. You’re not dying, are you? I’m going to get Lovegood. Charlie? _Charlie, get up._ Severus is dying! I’m going to get Lovegood!”

Charlie scrambled over, blinking away sleep as Draco tore out of the room, shouting for Lovegood at the top of his lungs.

He sighed.

“It’s quite alright, Charlie. I’m not dying. It’s just a bit of pain.”

Charlie stopped in front of him, and peered at him skeptically, as though he were lying, and he might keel over at any second.

“You’ll have to excuse my godson. He’s always had a bit of a flair for the dramatic.”

“Draco’s your godson?” Charlie asked, sitting beside him.

“Yes. I was rather close to his mother when I was in school, and I suppose his father and I were something like friends as well. He spent a great deal of time tugging on the hem of my robes as a boy, and he seems to have gotten it into his head that he needs to look after me now,” he grumbled.

“Well of course he does,” Charlie said gently.

Lovegood came padding into the room, yawning widely, trailed by a near-hysterical Draco. She slid her wand from behind her ear and lit the tip, peering into Severus’ eyes. Very gently, she raised one of his arms, then the other, humming sympthetically as he hissed in pain.

“You’re not cold, are you?”

“No.”

“Experiencing any numbness or tingling in any of your extremities?”

“No.”

“Trouble catching your breath?”

“No.”

She turned to Draco. “I told you he wasn’t dying.”

“But he said he was in _pain.”_

“Yes, well pain isn’t the same as dying.”

She turned back to Severus.

“When you reinjured yourself this time, you tore open an internal laceration and began bleeding heavily into your own abdomen, damaging several of your organs and compromising your own lung function. Sirius had to stop the bleeding by essentially gluing your insides back together with his own magic. It’s a process that he developed himself, and it works rather effectively, but it does cause rather severe pain as your body works to expel the foreign magic,” she said, as though she were discussing the weather. “I’ll give you the strongest analgesic potion you can safely take, but it will get a bit worse before it gets better.”

She flicked her wand, and a crystal goblet appeared on his bedside table.

“Drink that, and try to go back to sleep. And whatever you do, _stay in bed,_ at least till nightfall. I’ll ward your door, too, to keep the doldrums away.”

“The doldrums?” Draco asked.

“A type of sentient shadow,” she said, by way of explanation. “They live in the cellar here, but sometimes they manage to get out.”

“Oh, er…right.”

She stayed just long enough to watch Severus drain the contents of his goblet, then meandered her way out of the room, flicking little beams of light into corners and muttering as she went.

Severus laid back down gingerly, and as soon as his head touched the pillow, Draco was fussing over him, pulling up his blanket, and fetching him a glass of water that he hadn’t asked for, and wondering if he would like another blanket.

“I’m fine, Draco. Go back to sleep. In your own room.”

“Right,” said Draco.

And for a time, he was undisturbed, until a crush of pain gripped him, and he couldn’t stop the misery that wrenched its way from his throat. There was a cool hand on his forehead, and the weight of it there was reassuring, somehow. He had spent many nights alone and hurting over the course of two wars, and had never resented the lack of a comforting presence; indeed, the idea of someone watching him thrashing, helpless, unable to control his cries, unable to master his body, was the sort of thought that had sickened him, once. But that lingering imposition broke down entirely as he was seized by flash after flash of fresh agony, and when he felt a rough, calloused hand slide into his, he squeezed it gratefully. The hand held on through his miserable half-consciousness, reminding him that pain was only a sensation, temporary, that he would wake up eventually, and it would be gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	27. Severus Snape and the Door He Couldn’t Open

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I felt a bit sad after writing this. Regulus is one of my favorite characters. One day I'm gonna write a Regulus-lives AU where he and Sirius get to be brothers and everyone gets the damn happy ending they deserve. 
> 
> In the meantime, I'm gonna keep haunting "Face Death in the Hope" by lullabyknell, which is my favorite Regulus fic on the Citadel. (It's here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5986366/chapters/13756558 if anyone is interested)
> 
> Trigger warnings for mild sexual content and past character death.

The days went by slowly as he recovered. The first three he spent lying in bed, listening to Charlie read aloud to him from Dean Thomas’ paperback novels. Draco would sit and listen too, and Granger would come in, dragging George Weasley, and they would pour over arithmantic formulas. Once they discovered he was fairly proficient at muggle math, they brought Thomas along as well, and bit by bit, they began to piece together something that looked like a cohesive arithmantic pathway.

On the fourth day, he was able to walk about the house, and he made his way up to the library, where he found all of Grimmauld Place crowded around a table, scribbling formulas, arguing over postulates, checking and rechecking calculations.

He learned that Lupin practiced complex arithmantic calculations to calm himself down when he was nervous, and that Granger actually found arithmancy boring, and only practiced it because it was a necessary skill for an Unspeakable, and that Molly Weasley had almost earned a mastery in arithmancy before she’d gotten caught up in the first war. He learned that almost all of her children had an aptitude for it, particularly George, who was something of a prodigy despite having failed to earn an OWL in the subject. He learned that Draco had paid better attention in school than he had ever realized, and that Dean Thomas was much smarter than he had ever given the boy credit for, and that Lovegood would become so absorbed in what she was studying that she would forget to eat and drink unless somebody made her.

For three more days, he sat back and listened, learning little details about each of them, watching the way they bickered, and laughed, and looked after each other. At night, when he was alone, he would roam the halls, as far as he could get from a certain hall, and a certain door.

On the seventh day, he didn’t go up to the library. It had been twenty-three years today. He rose late in the afternoon, and wiled away the hours pacing the furthest reaches of the house. Finally, he could stand it no longer, and he followed a familiar path until he stopped in front of the closed door. There were initials inscribed on the nameplate.

“R.A.B,” it read, and “Do not enter without first knocking- this means you, Sirius,” in a familiar, elegant script. Regulus.

He brushed his fingers against the doorknob, and leaned against the door, holding himself up against a flood of memories _._ Regulus, looking up at him from under his dark lashes, Regulus smiling a rare, toothy smile, Regulus diving after a snitch, his eyes narrowed in concentration. Regulus grabbing his hand and tugging him boldly into the empty passageway behind the third-floor tapestry. Memories of the way it felt to kiss him, the sharp tug of his teeth against Severus’ bottom lip sending heat racing to pool in his belly. The way his stubble scratched beneath Severus’ lips. Memories of creeping in through the early-morning darkness, and climbing through the emerald-green hangings of his four-poster bed, the way he fisted his hand in in the crisp-white sheet when Severus kissed the insides of his thighs. The way it felt to be full of him. The way he wrapped his arms around Severus’ whole body when he came.

He had stood in front of this same door in another time, another decade. Twenty-three years ago, he had crept away from his lover’s wake, unable to bear the lid of the casket closed around empty space. He remembered the service and the procession and each mourner stepping forward to toss a shovel full of earth into the hole that held his casket, trying not to choke at the thought that the hole did not even hold his body, that nothing would ever hold his body again. The shovel had shaken in Severus’ hand. His hand was shaking now. He jerked his hand away from the doorknob and stumbled back. There were footsteps, heavy on the staircase below him.

“Snaaaape! Snape, where are you…dinner’s ready! Snape? There you are! Oh-”

Ginny stopped and watched him for a moment, head cocked to the side.

“That’s Regulus’ room,” she said. “Regulus was Sirius’ little brother, but he died during the first war.”

“Yes,” he replied. “I knew him.”

“You did? Were you friends in Slytherin?”

“Yes,” he said. “We were…friends.”

“Well, no one goes in that room,” Ginny said, tugging on his arm as though the room were somehow dangerous. He tore his eyes away from the inscription and looked down at her. Her face was troubled. She tugged his arm again. He followed her.

The smell of dinner was wafting through the house, but he was struck by a wave of nausea. What was he even doing here? These people…

_They’re not like you. They’re not like Regulus. They’re not yours._

A bubble of claustrophobic panic rose up in him, and he had to get away, had to run, had to get as far away as it was possible to be.

“Snape? Are you all right?”

“I’ve just remembered,” he said, jerking his arm away, and half-sprinting toward the foyer. “I need to send an owl.”

“Wait! Where are you going, you can just borrow Pigwidgeon-”

He seized the handle of the heavy oak front door, and flung himself out into the little courtyard in front of the building, hidden by magic from the eyes of muggle London.

“I’ll save you a plate,” Ginny’s voice called after him. Loneliness twisted in his chest as he disapparated.

He reappeared in front of a mouldering church. It had once been a priory of the Knights Hospitaller, built on Black family land to shelter those knights whose order had been displaced during the Protestant Reformation. Family legend had it, Regulus had told him once, that a daughter of the House of Black had been hanged from the priory rafters after she was caught with a knight from the cloister.

The knight, mad with grief, had cursed the Black patriarch to watch his house die by the same madness. And thus, the Black bloodline had been cursed. Regulus had laughed as he told the story, called it superstitious nonsense, but he had twisted the worn beads of a rosary between his fingers the whole while. Severus beat a wide path around the crumbling building, and when he stopped to open the heavy, iron gate of the churchyard cemetery, he found it already unlatched.

He slid through the opening, and crept silently through the rows of gravestones. He heard the sound of laughter. The hair along his arms prickled. He walked toward the sound.

Sirius Black. He was pressed up against his brother’s headstone, his back leaning against the face of it. His legs were sprawled out in the dirt in front of him. One hand was wrapped around the handle of an enormous brownstone jug. He was singing softly to himself, voice hoarse with drink, almost inaudible.

“you weren’t afraid…to face the devil…you were no stranger to the rain…”

He took a long swig, straight from the bottle.

“So go rest high up on that mountain…cause your work on Earth is done…”

He looked up, and his eyes widened slightly when he saw Severus. A smile, bitter and understanding, curled across his face. He scooted over and patted the ground beside him, and Severus walked over and sat down in the dirt. The ground was frozen. He began to shiver.

“You too, huh?” Black asked.

“Yes.”

He passed the jug. Severus didn’t consume alcohol as a rule, but he made a split-second decision and took a tentative sip. Whatever it was, it was bitter, but it made the pit of his belly warm, and he took another drink and passed it back.

“What was he like in Slytherin?” Sirius asked.

 _You would’ve known what he was like if you’d given a fuck about him._ The snarling retort battered against the back of his teeth, but it felt more like an old habit than a true anger. He didn’t hate the man anymore, he realized. He didn’t understand him, and he still thought he was a bit of an idiot, but that old hate that he had dragged through the wars and the years was gone.

After a long silence, he replied.

“He was…smart. Quiet. A bit shy.”

Sirius barked out a harsh laugh.

“Funny. I could never get him to shut up. God, that kid could talk…”

“He was quite good at Quidditch,” Severus offered.

“I know. I went to every practice. And every match.”

Severus looked at him strangely. There was no way in hell the Slytherin team would have let a Gryffindor come to spy on their practices, little brother or not.

_Unless he…oh._

“Potter’s invisibility cloak,” Severus said.

“Got it in one. Never missed a day watching him fly.”

“You loved him,” Severus stated.

“Of course I did. He was my baby brother.”

“He always said he hated you,” Severus replied. “At school. But some nights he would call for you in his sleep.”

Black took another swig, and passed the bottle again.

“You two shared a bed, then?” Black asked.

“Yes. We were…yes.”

“Huh…I always sort of wondered. I had a lot of shitty things to say about you back then, and Reggie hexed me sideways for all of them.”

He felt his eyes burning, and took a long drink. He remembered the feeling of a warm body pressed against his side, and realized belatedly that Black was leaning against him. Black’s body heat was seeping into Severus’ skin. He held himself very still, forcing himself to accept the unfamiliar intrusion. After several long minutes, he let out a breath and leaned back. His body felt lighter than it ought to, and he realized that he was probably a bit drunk, and Black was rather drunker.

“Wish I could see the angels’ faces when they see you coming home…” Black whispered.

“Why do you know a muggle hymn?” Severus asked.

Black hesitated, looking hard at him.

“During the first war…all those attacks on muggle villages. The Order, we…couldn’t always stop them in time. There were a lot of funerals. I learned a lot of muggle hymns.”

He leaned closer into Black, and wondered how many of those muggles had died at the end of his own wand.

Black sighed, and flopped his head onto Severus’ shoulder. In the churchyard, snow began to fall.

After some time, he staggered up and lay his hand on the cold marble.

“We gathered ‘round your grave to grieve,” Black said gently, voice breaking.

He held out a hand, and Severus grasped it and let himself be hauled to his feet.

“Come on. Let’s go home,” Black said, swaying a bit. “Charlie Weasley said he was gonna make polenta and meatballs for dinner.”

He grabbed Severus’ arm, and they apparated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	28. Ginny Weasley and the Beast That Wouldn’t Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've been like...on a writing spree. In this chapter, Ginny and Neville go on an adventure. 
> 
> Trigger warnings for a bit of graphic violence, as well as past character death.

She sat on the dusty floor of the greenhouse, still sweating from the morning’s training. Remus had joined them today, falling back to run with Luna, who hated all forms of exercise with almost as much vigor as she hated being left behind on runs. Ginny adored Remus, but she much preferred training with Sirius, who would push himself until he was sick, just to see how much he could take. It was an impulse she understood. She had been too small, once. Too weak to stop her friends from being hurt. She had been ordered to stay behind and wait. But never again. The next overprotective brother or well-meaning best friend who tried to protect her would have to catch her first.

They had taken their run at a punishing pace, had blown past their calisthenics targets and doubled their pushups and crunches, only stopping when neither of them could physically move. When she peeled herself off the ground, still panting, she found Remus watching his half-naked and sweaty partner with the sort of look that she knew meant they were about five seconds from fucking each other right in the dirt in the middle of the Forbidden Forest. She almost felt sorry for the acromantulas and centaurs and all the other furry little woodland creatures.

She looked over at Luna, rolling her eyes.

“Come on, let’s get out of here while these two still have their pants on,” she said, and Luna laughed knowingly and apparated them home.

The greenhouse was rather good for meditating. Neville had mended it within a week of moving in at Grimmauld, and planted all kinds of things that were good for healing and potioneering, and every one of those things had a vitality that was just a bit unique. She was finally beginning to understand now, after weeks of listening to Remus talk about the energy of life and growth and the permanence of the earth.

There was a vitality in living things, which was different from the magic of the dirt and stone. It was ready to bend and change, willing to alter its shape if she could only figure out how to ask it. She pooled her magic, and let it reach out, trying to separate the energies of individual plants. She took a deep breath, stilling her thoughts, and she was calm.

And then suddenly, there was a loud crash behind her, and she jumped about ten feet into the air, yelping like a kicked dog and whipping around, wand out.

 _“Neville!_ What the actual-”

She stopped short at the look on his face.

“Neville. What’s wrong?”

“Ginny, I need you.”

“Alright. I’m here. What is it?”

“I need to show you something, but…you can’t repeat what I’m about to show you. To anyone.”

“Neville…you’re scaring me. What is it?”

“Just come.”

“Alright.”

He offered her his arm, and they turned together, apparating away.

When they reappeared, they were in an alley across from the phone booth that would take them into the Ministry. Neville dug around in his pocket and pulled out-

“Harry’s cloak…why do you have Harry’s cloak?”

He threw it over her.

“It’s alright, Harry let me borrow it like two days before he went missing, and I’ve had it ever since. Just stay close to me.”

“Alright,” she said, and followed along close at his heels.

_Where are you going, Nev?_

He walked right past the phone booth, turning down a darkened alley. He flicked his wand and she felt the crackle of wards falling. The alley dead-ended into a solid brick wall, and he tapped out a complicated pattern against the bricks.

“This is the back door to the detainment facility. The Aurory holds people here while they wait for their trials.”

A crack formed in the bricks, and the wall parted. She followed Neville through. He raised a hand at a bored-looking Auror sitting behind a desk, and the man nodded at him briefly before returning to his newspaper. Neville walked purposefully down a hall, past a row of cells, sparing not even a glance for their occupants. He turned a corner, pulled open a heavy door, descended an old, wooden staircase, and she followed him into a drafty, dim room, lit by only one thin, flickering candle.

“We keep the dangerous ones on the lower level, away from the main cells,” he whispered. He aimed his wand at the door, and performed a complicated locking charm.

Ginny pulled off the cloak and shoved it into her robe pocket, following Neville down another corridor, past rows of bars, until his stopped in front of the room’s single occupied cell.

“What the…”

Greyback. Fenrir Greyback, lying curled on his side in the fetal position on a thin, dirty cot that was pressed up against a wall. She looked at Neville, as though for confirmation, and the grim expression on his face was an answer in itself.

“We caught him transforming when the sun came up. He was one of the wolves attacking the village.”

“That’s impossible. Greyback is dead.”

“We thought Greyback was dead.”

“No, Neville. I saw…”

*************************************************************************************

_She could see them dueling from over the balcony, the bursts of wandlight three floors below her, and she saw the second the spell hit, the second Lavender’s body stiffened and toppled, petrified._

_“LAVENDER!” Ginny screamed, bolting down the stairs. “LAVENDER!”_

_She took them by threes, leaping down them, sprinting as fast as she could push herself, wand out in front of her. By the time she reached the top of the first floor landing, the man was already on top of Lavender, sinking his rotten teeth into her skin and shaking his head until his mouth came away bloody. She watched, frozen, as he sank his teeth into her cheek and tore away a massive chunk of flesh. His ragged fingers had dug long gouges into her arms and chest. To her horror, she realized that Lavender had not been stupefied. She was conscious, awake, but petrified, her limbs locked into place. The man dipped his tongue into the bloody well of her missing flesh, licking at it almost tenderly, and Ginny snapped back to reality. She gripped her wand and surged forward, anger twisting her magic into something that she barely recognized, like some animal pulling at its restraints._

_But before she reached the bottom, a lone figure whipped around the corner, wand drawn. Professor Lupin. For a split second, his eyes widened. He looked down, and Ginny saw his face twist, warping into a mask of rage. His wand slipped from his hand. He launched his whole body at the man, slamming him to the ground. Then, he grabbed the man’s throat and dug in with his fingertips, and Ginny saw his fingers sink past the knuckles into the soft neck-flesh. Ginny saw the dawning of comprehension in the man’s eyes, and he began to buck wildly beneath Lupin, but it was too late. Remus Lupin ripped the man’s throat out, holding the chunk of flesh in his hand, and listened as the hollow whistling of the man trying to suck air into a ruptured vacuum slowed and finally ceased._

_He looked up, and Ginny looked him in the eyes, and there was revulsion there, and horror, and pity. She knelt beside him._

_“Don’t come any closer to me, Ginny,” he said, voice low, staring at the bloody gore clutched in his closed fist as though it might hold some sort of answer to a question he couldn’t ask aloud._

_“Professor-”_

_“No. Stay away. Please.”_

_Her eyes narrowed._

_“How dare you sit here pitying yourself while Lavender dies beside you,” she snapped. “Accio wand!”_

_She snatched the bloody remnant of Fenrir Greyback’s throat from his hand, tossing it over her shoulder, and slapped his wand down into his palm._

_“If you’re strong enough to kill a man with your bare hands, you’re strong enough to carry her. Come on. Get up.”_

_She seized him by the lapel and hauled him to his feet, turning on her heel._

_“Follow me. I’ll cover you. We have to get her to the infirmary.”_

*************************************************************************************

“Neville. Greyback died. I saw him die.”

“Well he didn’t do it properly, then,” Neville snapped. “He was very much alive when we had to call in _an entire team_ to restrain him. They had to put him under the Draught of Living Death to stop him trying to claw a hole in the wall with his bare hands-”

“Wait, look! What is that?”

There was something dark on the ground beneath the cot. Ginny could see the flickering of the wan candlelight reflecting in it. She stepped closer to the bars, and realized-

“Uh, Nev? This door…is open.”

Neville squinted in the gloom, and something hardened in his tone.

“Get behind me,” he said, throwing an arm out in front of her and raising his wand.

He stepped toward the bars, and nudged them open with his elbow.

“Shit.”

He surged forward, illuminating the tip of his wand. In the sudden light, she saw the glint of red. There was a smear of blood down the wall, and it had formed a red pool on the floor below. Neville grabbed the man’s chin, and tilted his head to the side.

“Oh, God.”

The back of Greyback’s skull was missing entirely.

“He’s been in here for a week,” Neville said. “This blood is still wet.”

They stared at each other for a long minute, as though waiting to wake from a dream. Finally, Neville broke the silence.

“Put the cloak back on. I’m going to ask Anders if he’s seen anyone else come in.”

“Right,” she said, pulling the cloak out and throwing it over herself.

She followed him in numb silence, stopping behind him as he reached the desk.

“Hullo Anders,” he said politely.

“Oh, hullo Longbottom. What do they have you doing down here?” he asked with a friendly smile.

“I needed to check on Greyback,” Neville replied. “Hey, speaking of which, has anyone else been to look in on him since you’ve been here?”

“Who?” Anders asked, cocking his head to the side.

“Greyback,” Neville repeated impatiently, gesturing toward the door to the lower level. “Has anyone come to question him, or assign him a trial date, or…anything?”

“Longbottom…what are you on about?”

“Oh, come on, now’s hardly the time to pull my leg!”

“Are you alright, mate? It’s just…there’s no one down there right now. We haven’t had anyone on the lower level in days.”

Neville stared at him.

“Right,” he said slowly. “Must have heard something wrong…maybe it was Gregovitch I was looking for, or Gallivander…”

“Oh, I bet you mean Garrickson,” Anders supplied helpfully. “He’s upstairs, though. Got caught trying to slip Devil’s Snare into his muggle neighbor’s begonias. Poor woman. Gave her a hell of a fright.”

“Oh, man. Some people, you know?” Neville said, shaking his head.

“Some people,” Anders agreed.

“Alright, well…see you later,” Neville said, edging toward the door.

“Later, Longbottom,” Anders said with a wave, turning back to his paper.

When they had put a safe distance between them and the Ministry entrance, they slipped down an alley, and Ginny pulled the cloak off.

“His memory’s been modified,” Neville said the second she reappeared.

“How do you know?”

“Anders was on the team who helped subdue Greyback. He nearly had his nose bitten off trying to wrestle that man into his cell.”

“Oh.”

Neville’s face was white. There was still a bit of blood on his fingers from where he had touched Greyback’s mangled skull, and Ginny spelled it off.

“Come on,” she said, slipping her hand into his. “We’re going to go sit and have a coffee, and we’re going to figure this out.”

Several cups of coffee later, the color was back in his face, and Ginny threw up a silencing spell around their booth and leaned toward him over her mug.

“Alright. So your buddy Anders nearly got mauled by a maybe-dead-maybe-not Fenrir Greyback, and he doesn’t remember a thing. I think you’re right. There’s no way that can be anything other than memory modification,” she began. “So we need to see how far this goes. Do you remember who all else helped bring him in?”

“Yeah,” Neville replied. “It was a team of four. Me, Anders, Donohue, and Tonks. Seamus knows about it too; he was with Tonks when they called her in for backup, but she ordered him to find Lavender and keep her in the village. They put a level 5 restriction on it, too. It’s super classified; I broke like…seven different laws by showing you…”

“That’s alright, Nev. I’ll take it to my grave. But listen; I have a theory. If someone went to the trouble of Obliviating Anders, they’d have to Obliviate everyone else, too.”

“So I need to find out if everyone else on the team was modified,” Neville said. “I should take a look at the chain-of-custody forms, too, just to see if anyone else had any contact with Greyback while he was in the holding cell.”

“Yeah, and we’ll have to do something about his body,” Ginny pointed out. “If no one remembers putting him in there, it’s gonna come as a hell of a shock when they find him rotting.”

“Ugh. Thank you for the imagery.”

“Anytime, Nev.”

“Alright. You’re right. Give me the cloak, I’ll have to go back for the body. But what am I supposed to do with it?”

“Take it to the Cliffs of Dover, and throw it into the sea?”

 _“Oh, God._ I’m going to get caught. They’ll make me turn in my robes, Ginny. They’ll put me in Azkaban.”

“Neville, you have an invisibility cloak, and you’re an Auror. Just say you dropped your wallet in there or something and go back down and grab him.”

“They’re going to put me in Azkaban,” he said again, burying his face in his hands.

“I wouldn’t let anyone put you in Azkaban, Nev,” she said, rubbing his arm. “I’d break you out, and we’d swim back across the North Sea.”

 _“You can’t swim across the North Sea!”_ Neville wailed.

“Sure you can. Sirius did!”

“Because _Sirius is mad.”_

“We’d swim across the North Sea, and then we’d smuggle ourselves to Costa Rica on a merchant ship and live out our lives on a tropical beach somewhere, drinking coconut juice and watching pretty girls in bikini swimsuits all day.”

“You’re mad too,” Neville said, smiling gently.

“It's going to be alright. Something’s fishy for sure, but we’re going to figure it out.”

“Right,” said Neville, and when he stood, he had the resolute look back in his eyes. She passed him the cloak under the table and kissed his cheek, and he left, sparing a last glance over his shoulder for her as he exited the warm little café.

She threw down some muggle money, rose, and departed after him, dreading the conversation that was about to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	29. Ginny Weasley and the Dead Who Wouldn’t Stay Dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who left me lovely comments! You guys are the real MVPs <3

She found Remus in the kitchen, fixing a plate of sandwiches for Sirius, who was sprawled in a chair in his underpants, bare chest flushed, eyes heavy-lidded, body damp with sweat. Remus was in about the same state, though he had at least managed to pull his clothes back on. The electric sort of crackle of their joined magic was still in the air, and she paused for a moment to thank everything out there listening that she hadn’t walked in even a minute earlier.

“Remus. I need to talk to you.”

“Uh-oh, Moony. You’re in trouble,” Sirius teased.

Remus turned, a slice of tomato hanging from his mouth, and cocked his head questioningly. He had a happy sort of tilt to the corners of his mouth. She walked over, pulled the plate from his hands, and set it on the counter.

“Please,” she said, looking at him. He swallowed his tomato.

“Sure,” he said gently, and the beginnings of a smile twisted into creased worry.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied honestly.

He exchanged a brief, inscrutable glance with Sirius, then wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and walked her out of the kitchen. She let herself lean into him as she followed him to the first-floor parlor, then peeled away to sit on a tufted sofa. He aimed his wand at the fireplace, and it sprang to life. She watched it for a moment, silently, as he sat beside her. He waited, letting her struggle with the words for a while. Finally, she made herself speak.

“You remember Yaxley?” she asked.

“Do you mean…as a person?”

“No,” she said. “The case. When we found him…”

“Oh. That. Yes, unfortunately, I remember.”

“I want to talk about how his body got to that farmhouse.”

“Ginny. We’ve been over this; there has to be a logical explanation-”

“Remus, Yaxley was listed among the dead after the battle.”

“Yes, well, there was a lot going on then. Someone could have misidentified his body. Or he could have been stunned, and someone put his name down as a casualty by mistake. Or he could have hidden himself among the dead and snuck away after the battle.”

“I don’t know, Remus…”

“Well it isn’t as though he could have been killed, come back to life, and then been killed again-”

“But Fred said-”

“Ginny. Did you see Yaxley die?”

She sighed at his mugglish stubbornness, convinced, like Harry and Hermione often were, that there was some mundane explanation.

_You live in a world surrounded by magic, Remus. Not every explanation is rational._

“Well, no, but-”

“Right. So he lived through the battle, was somehow marked down as a casualty, and he snuck off and hid himself out in the country where no one would recognize him, and none of the Aurory thought to look for him because he was listed as having been killed. It only makes sense that-”

“Alright, but listen,” she said, cutting him off. “Neville took me to the Aurory this morning…we went through the back entrance to the pre-trial detention cells. They caught one of the people responsible for the werewolf attack.”

“Oh! That’s good news, then! What did Neville need you for? Witness testimony?”

“No. It was off the record. I went under Harry’s cloak. He wanted me to verify the identity of the prisoner.”

“He needed you to…verify the identity?”

“Yes. Off the record. Remus…it was Greyback.

Ginny thought she could probably have lived out her whole life and died in the span of the silence that followed, but she kept quiet, allowing her mentor to time to process.

“Ginny…”

“I know. Neville came and threw the cloak over me this morning and wouldn’t even tell me where we were going until we got there. Apparently, Tonks put everyone on the team who subdued him under a level 5 classification.”

“Ginny-”

“Look, I know it sounds crazy, but me and Neville both saw it with our own eyes. It was Greyback in that cell, Remus. But here’s the thing. He was supposed to be under the Drought of Living Death, but he wasn’t sleeping…he was dead.”

“What?”

“Dead. It looked like someone had cracked the back of his head open. There was blood everywhere. _Then,_ when Neville went to ask one of his teammates about it, the guy had been Obliviated. Didn’t remember Greyback, didn’t remember a thing.”

“Ginny, I don’t-”

There was a loud thump, and with a clatter, the library doors were thrown open, and Neville, looking rather shell-shocked, scrambled inside.

“Ginny. Somebody stole the body,” he said, looking grim.

“What do you mean-”

“It’s gone. I went back to get rid of it, and there was this woman standing there, and the body and all the blood was gone.”

“A woman? Who was she?”

“I don’t know. She tried to tell me she was with the Department of Mysteries…had this weird tattoo…I went to arrest her and she pulled her wand on me.”

_Oh. Shit._

“What was the tattoo?” Ginny asked.

“Oh, er- some creepy little tattoo of a cockroach.”

Ginny looked at Remus.

“Oh shit,” Remus said.

“Yeah, “oh shit” is right!” Neville began again. “Then she tried to Obliviate me, and when I went to subdue her, she blew up half the Aurory! I was almost crushed to death under like 500 pounds of stone wall…lucky thing we went over reinforced shield charms just the other day…finally, Lavender and Seamus dug me out, and- _get this-_ no one in the entire building remembered seeing her. They all think it was a terrorist attack. Which it might well be. I don’t know. Ginny…I don’t know.”

“Alright,” Remus said, flying into Responsible Teacher mode. “Let’s think this through. We’re going to borrow the Pensieve from Sirius, and you’re going to store your memories of everything that happened from the day of the werewolf attack until now. I am going to study those memories _very carefully_ to get to the bottom of why we seem to have people running around who should already be dead. And you are going to go back to work and make a very public spectacle of walking somewhere alone. My guess is that the woman will turn back up to try to Obliviate you. Which is why I’m going to rip out the memory of this conversation as soon as you’ve stored it.”

“What?” Neville asked, eyes widening. “Why?”

“Because when she does show back up, you need to let her Obliviate you, and you need to make sure she thinks she’s completed the job,” Ginny jumped in, catching onto Remus’ logic immediately. “It seems like, whatever she wants, it’s not to hurt anyone. If she’s capable of doing mind magic on the entire Auror force and then halfway destroying a building, better to just let her think she’s gotten her way than try to take her into custody with no backup. As soon as you get back, we’ll show you the Pensieve, you’ll have your memories back, nad whoever that woman is will be none the wiser.”

Neville looked extremely skeptical.

“Look,” she said, placatingly. “If you want, I can follow you under the cloak to make sure you’re ok.”

“No,” Neville replied, sighing heavily. “No, it’s all right. It makes sense. Whoever she is, she’s clearly not aiming to kill anyone or she would have done it; she just wants the thing with Greyback covered up, for whatever reason. I figure if she thinks she’s in the clear, she’ll let her guard down and I’ll have a better shot of figuring out what her involvement is.”

“You mean _we’ll_ have a better shot,” Ginny corrected. “We’ve got your back in this, Nev.”

Neville shifted uncomfortably.

“Er- about that,” he said, looking apologetically between Ginny and Remus. “I appreciate your help with the Pensieve, but…after I get my memories back, I think it may be better if I handle the rest of the investigation alone.”

“What? Neville, why?” Ginny asked incredulously.

“I shouldn’t have…it was probably wrong of me to involve you,” Neville said, looking at the ground miserably.

“Then why did you bring me in the first place?”

“I don’t know…I panicked. There was just…I knew Greyback was…and I didn’t even know what I was looking at, Gin. I wanted you to tell me “surely there’s been some mistake,” or “there’s bound to be a logical explanation for all this.” I didn’t want to be looking at…whatever that was. I didn’t want…but it doesn’t matter what I want. I’m an Auror now. It’s my responsibility…and no one else even remembers, and it’s my responsibility to look after them. And you. I know you can take care of yourself, Ginny, but you’re a civilian. The investigation is my job. I shouldn’t have let myself…I shouldn’t have involved you, Gin. I’m sorry.”

The words were a dagger, but it was a familiar one. Once, after Harry had left her behind, and Luna had been taken, it had been she and Neville, side by side, surviving in tandem. He had a new wand, a wand that had truly chosen him, and a slow, scorching determination to see his mother and father avenged, and she had been beside him as he had shed his boyish awkwardness and stepped into himself. She had been there, pushing him, snarling at him to face his own power, grab it, fight for it, claim it, and he listened, and he did. He grew into himself, beside her. And now that he had found his quiet confidence and his power, he aimed to use it to keep her back, behind him, protected. Just like Harry had done.

She looked at Neville. He was rather miserable about it, but he was also resigned. He intended to tackle the case alone. She could not, of course, allow that to happen; if the Department was involved, the case was beyond the scope of even the most seasoned of the Auror force. Funny. She hated the idea of being protected, but that was exactly what she was about to do to him.

“Alright, Nev,” she said. “I understand. You have a job to do. It’s not my place.”

“I’m sorry, Gin-”

“It’s alright, Neville. Go help Remus with the Pensieve, OK?”

She turned away from him before he could reply, stoking the fire for something to do, and Neville followed Remus, who shot her a “we-need-to-talk” look over his shoulder on his way out the door.

When Remus returned, she was halfway to a temper. He had brought them both a steaming mug of cocoa, and he thrust Ginny’s at her before she could say a word. She sighed into it, taking a bracing sip. There was nothing for it, she decided. Neville was still here, and still family to her. He was changing, becoming a different version of himself. All she could do was accept it.

“Ginny. I looked at the memories. It was Greyback.”

“I know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know! That’s what I was trying to tell you!”

“Alright. You were right. What are we going to do about Neville?”

“Let the Chief Obliviate him, I guess.”

“You think it was the Chief then?”

“Who else would it be? Could’ve been another Unthinkable, I guess, but…spreading rumors of a terrorist attack? Sounds like a job for the Chief Misinformation Officer to me.”

“You’re probably right,” he said. “But it’s strange for the Chief to get involved.”

“Yeah,” Ginny agreed.

They sat back, drinking their cocoa. Finally, she broke the silence.

“Remus. Is there any chance he could have…”

“I ripped his throat out, Ginny,” Remus said, the weight of guilt in his words. “You saw what I did to him. Greyback was dead. Besides that, I saw his body put into the ground.”

She looked up at him, head cocked.

“After the battle?” she asked.

“Yes. After the dead were cleared, Greyback’s was the only Death Eater whose body was unclaimed. The Healers meant to incinerate it, but I…I took him and buried his corpse. He was dead. There’s no question.”

“Why?” she asked.

_He turned you. What made him worth the dirt on your hands?_

“Don’t make me answer that, Ginny,” he said. His voice was thick with grief.

Ginny was silent for a long time, wondering about where Remus had been all the years he had spent without his Marauders, without Harry, without anyone. She recalled the scene on the castle floor vividly; it was a memory she had no hope of ever being rid of. It had been personal, she realized, replaying the sight of him throwing the man to the stone floor, knees wrapped around him, holding his body down. His hand around the man’s throat had been personal. She stared at her own hands, as though they might offer some justification.

Finally, she said, “Alright.”

“First step, I think, is to put in a request for a copy of our report on the Yaxley case and go back through the details. Maybe we’re missing something. We’ll need to see if there’s been a report on Greyback as well. I’ll pull copies of the Auror reports too, though if the Chief’s involved, they’ll likely have been altered. We’ll do that tomorrow. We also need to think about the ritual site. First you and Snape get attacked there, then Hermione and Dean. We ought to revisit, either disillusioned or under the cloak, and see if there’s any sign of activity.”

“Ok, but what does the Sway case have to do with Greyback?”

“Maybe nothing, but don’t you think it strange that a pack of werewolves would be attacking a little village like Sway? It’s almost like they had been waiting at the site…like they were…”

“Guarding it?” Ginny supplied.

“Something like that, yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	30. Draco Malfoy and the Stone Staircase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have this headcanon that Sirius and all his pureblood cousins rebelled as children against being forced to learn proper ballroom waltzes by sneaking out to muggle jazz clubs and dancing lindyhop and swing and scandalizing their parents. So naturally, Sirius had to pass this on to the next generation.

Since their first, disastrous practice, Draco had managed to learn not only how to make a fist correctly, but how to throw a punch, imagining, in his mind, that he was trying to punch through Charlie to hit something on the other side of him, planting his feet in an A-stance, bending his knees, and letting his power come from his hips and the core of his body. He had thrown what must have been thousands of them; straight punches, hooks, jabs, crosses, body shots, palm strikes, hammer fists. The motions had graduated from repetitive to natural; he was aware of his body now, and how to use the potential energy in his motions.

Yes, he could throw a punch now. The problem was, so could Charlie.

 _“Charlie!_ What are you _doing,_ that was almost my…OW FUCK, what the-”

He was cut off abruptly as his back hit the ground with a ‘thud,’ but he leapt back to his feet, knowing better than to give Charlie even a split second’s opening.

“Dammit, Charlie!”

“Don’t get mad,” he said, leaping away, just shy of Draco’s answering fist. “Get even.”

“I don’t _want_ to get even, I…”

He trailed off, his breath coming in foggy gasps. He took a running leap at Charlie, then skidded to a stop a second before striking, and Charlie had already taken a step back, and there, for one single, glorious instant, was the twist of Charlie’s unguarded torso. He stepped in and swung, and-

Charlie threw an arm out, hooked it under Draco’s armpit, wrapped his leg behind Draco’s knee, and threw him to the ground heavily.

“What do you want then?” Charlie asked, grinning, his whole weight laying bodily on top of Draco.

“You to stop crushing the very breath out of my lungs! Get off! You’re heavier than a hippogriff!”

“Hey, didn’t I hear something about you losing a fight with a hippogriff once?”

“Shut _up,_ Weasley.”

Charlie laughed and pushed himself up, sliding his knees forward so he was sitting on Draco’s chest.

“Alright, enough of your sorry punching for a bit. I want you to see if you can get me off.”

Draco smirked.

“Pretty sure I could pull that off in about thirty seconds, Weasley, but sorry, I’m not interested.”

“Grappling!” Charlie spluttered, blushing. “I meant…I’m talking about _grappling.”_

He looked so flustered; Draco couldn’t help but laugh. Honestly, the man was unflappable in the face of certain death, but make one dirty joke and he turned into a babbling mess.

“Aren’t you supposed to be beating me up or something?” he asked, smacking Charlie in the chest.

“Uh, actually,” Charlie said, leaning back so his full weight was crushing Draco’s chest, “You were supposed to be…extricating yourself from my person.”

Draco seized him by the arm and pulled, then pushed against his chest, then flailed for a minute, trying to throw him.

“Nope,” he said finally. “Not a hippogriff. An elephant. There’s an elephant on my chest.”

Charlie rolled his eyes, then rolled off Draco.

“Yeah, yeah. Now listen to me, ‘cause this is important. Normally, I would teach you strikes, blocks, kicks, chokes, hip throws, all the basics first, and I would tell you the whole time, never, ever let yourself get taken to the ground. You end up on the ground, you need to find a way up within five seconds, especially if you’re taking on more than one opponent, or shit will go very poorly for you. But I’m gonna switch it up a bit and have you work on grappling early.”

“How come?” Draco asked.

“When I learned strikes, my mentor taught me by hitting me right in the fucking face until I could take it without flinching. If I dropped my guard, she’d put me on the ground, and beat the outright fuck out of me. When I go to strike you, you flinch hard, and you leave yourself wide open. We’ve got to break you of that habit, or it’ll get you killed. But I can’t…make myself hit you in the face like that,” he said sheepishly. “So I’m gonna to teach you how to grapple, then we’re gonna to go back to strikes, and every time you flinch when I go for you, I’m gonna put you down, and you’re gonna have to fight your way back up.”

“I guess I better get good at grappling, then,” Draco said drily.

“That’s the plan,” said Charlie. He rolled over on his back and held out his arms, and Draco leaned into them instinctively, surprising himself.

“Alright, say we’re fighting and you’ve got me on the ground. Now throw your leg over; there you go, you want your knees on either side of my body. This is called a mount,” said Charlie, ignoring Draco’s smirk.

“Once you mount your opponent…oh my God, stop laughing! Once you mount your opponent, the object is to control their body…alright, yes, it’s very funny…that’s right, control their body, so they can’t get in a good guard position to protect their head and chest. It’s easier said than done though, because there are a number of ways to escape or reverse a mount.”

Draco was red-faced, gasping for breath from laughing, when abruptly, Charlie hooked his ankle around Draco’s, grabbed him by the bicep, just below his armpit, and shoved up with his hip, flipping Draco and rolling on top of him.

“You think it’s funny?” Charlie growled.

His left arm was pinned beneath Charlie’s hand, his right arm was trapped against his side by Charlie’s knee, and Draco was reminded of the power in the man’s body.

“I’ve got you in one hell of a position, Draco,” he said, the calm in his voice betraying the barest undertone of danger. “I’ve got a clear shot at your head. I could kill you with one, well-placed strike.”

“Or I could get my hand around your throat,” he said, sliding his free hand up Draco’s neck, and only barely pressing with his thumb and forefinger, just below Draco’s jaw.

Draco sucked in a sharp breath at the slow curl of arousal, rising up in the pit of him, and the shock of confusion paralyzed him for a moment. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought of Charlie slurping his food, Charlie farting so loud in the shower that Draco could hear it from the kitchen of their little flat on the reserve, Charlie attempting to belch his way through the alphabet while still sitting at the dinner table, and to Draco’s great and powerful relief, the feeling of heat in him flickered and died.

“Alright!” he yelped, half-frantically. “I’m listening. How do I get you off me?!”

The next several hours he spent trapped under Charlie.

“Wrap your leg around, there you go, now lock your ankle around mine. There! Now you’re controlling my leg, I can’t push out with it to gain any leverage! No, keep your elbows in, you never want to give me space to get up in your armpit. There you go, get that foot under my knee and kick it out from under me! Now push up with you hip! That’s it, that’s how you break a mount!”

Draco found, by the end of it, that he had never hated anything like he hated grappling. He learned quickly how to leverage the power in his own body, and to use Charlie’s momentum against him to throw his larger frame off balance, but the instinct to protect his face and throat overpowered his ability to think strategically, and he found himself helpless again and again.

Charlie kept them at it for longer than usual, and it was nearly lunchtime when he finally rolled onto his back and patted the ground beside him. Used to the routine, Draco flopped down, exhausted and dirty and shivering at the feeling of sweat beginning to cool on his skin. The ground was freezing, and he scooted in toward Charlie, leaning into his body heat. Charlie warmed the earth with a quick charm, and Draco relaxed into the ground.

“Alright, take a minute to see if you can clear your mind without using occlumency. Try to listen to yourself breathe, and feel your lungs expand. See if you can feel the air in your chest.”

Draco complied, drawing in a breath and focusing on the rise and fall of his chest, imagining that there was nothing that existed in the world besides his body, and Charlie’s, and the air, and the ground beneath them. It didn’t matter that he was sore or hungry. He let the nagging complaints of his body fade into the periphery, listening to the low hum of Charlie’s voice beside him.

“When you learn the Forms, you have to find the Forms. They’re already in you, the way a Patronus is in you. They’re sentient, like a Patronus is. But unlike a Patronus, the Forms won’t come when you call them. They won’t willingly protect you or lend you their power. You have to control them. Finding the Forms can be dangerous. If you’re weak-willed, or a coward, they’ll overpower you. You have to be willing to fight for them, in order for them to fight for you.”

Draco had heard this speech several times, and every time Charlie repeated it, the seed of doubt in his belly rooted itself a little deeper.

_I am weak-willed. I am a coward._

When he had been faced with the choice to kneel before the Dark Lord or fight, he had chosen compliance. He had chosen submission, believing that as long as he groveled and pandered, he would be given a place of power in the new world order without ever having to suffer or sacrifice. He had watched Luna Lovegood, half starving in the dungeon of his family home, rising every day, unflagging, never wavering, and he had chosen to stand by. He had watched Granger, tortured on his parlour floor, leaping to her feet to fight even while she was covered in her own drying blood, and he had not intervened. It wasn’t until the Dark Lord took his parents that Draco considered the risk of resistance.

 _“…hated myself…but I’m not sorry,”_ he heard his own voice.

 _“Good,”_ said Charlie, from a distant memory. _“Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”_

But the voice wasn’t Charlie’s. It was older, deep and throaty and wizened by time. Power crackled in the sound of it, and Draco shivered. He was ascending a staircase, and somehow, it was familiar; he knew the exact number of rough-hewn stone steps, but he wasn’t sure how he knew. But he found himself climbing them as if pulled by some magnetic force. They stretched higher and higher, rising forever until they narrowed and narrowed and disappeared into a dark pinprick in the distance. They were endless; he would never make it, but…why did he want to make it? What was up there? He felt the echo of cold laughter before he snapped back to the cold air of the blufftop and found Charlie shaking his shoulder worriedly.

“Draco? You all right?”

“Yeah,” he said, feeling foggy and distant. “I was…somewhere.”

“Huh,” Charlie said, cocking his head. “What did it look like?”

“A staircase…somewhere I’ve been before, but…different…”

“Weird. Mine is actually this blufftop,” he said.

“Your…what, exactly,” Draco asked.

“It’s your internal landscape. For most people, it’s a place that is important to them, or significant somehow. You find the place inside yourself first, and then you find the Forms there. Mine is right here,” he said, splaying his arms out and gesturing at the space around them. “It’s odd though; it took me almost a full year to find it. You’ve only been at this for a few weeks.”

“I don’t think it…wanted me there,” said Draco, trying to control the quiver in his voice.

“Of course it didn’t,” Charlie said. “The place you go to is a deep part of yourself, like your Patronus, and like the Forms themselves. It’s hard to look at the parts of ourselves that we’ve buried.”

“What if I can’t?” Draco asked, feeling the seed of doubt begin to sprout. “What if I find the Forms and they just murder me inside my own head? I’m not…I can’t…”

“Whatever it is that you think you’re not,” Charlie said, wrapping an arm around Draco and rubbing his thumb back and forth across his shoulder, “you need to give yourself a chance to be before you decide on it.”

Draco stared at the ground, eyes burning.

“Look, I’m not telling you it won’t be dangerous, or that you won’t get hurt, or any of that. I nearly died mastering the Knight’s form, and the Monk still fights me for control. You have to be willing to face something that can kill you, Draco. If you’re not willing, tell me that now, and we’ll stop this. But for what it’s worth, I think you’re stronger than you’re giving yourself credit for. I think you’ll manage just fine,” Charlie said.

“How do you know?” Draco asked.

“Oh, well…I felt about the same way when I first started learning,” Charlie said. “My Archer’s Form came pretty naturally to me, but I was scared as hell of the Knight, and I couldn’t even _find_ the Monk until a couple years ago, and boy let me tell you, she did not like me. I wanted to give up, at first. I was sure I couldn’t do it.”

Draco tried to imagine the man before him giving up on anything, and found he couldn’t picture it. He just seemed so…competent.

“How did you get through it?” Draco asked.

Charlie barked a harsh laugh.

“Greta,” he said simply. “My mentor.”

“You see these?” he asked, holding out his arms, scarred with lacerations and shiny burns. “You think I got these from dragons? Nope. Greta. Turns out, I was more scared of her than the Knight in the end.”

Privately, Draco was glad he had ended up with Charlie as a mentor, instead of the mad-sounding woman that Charlie seemed to baldly adore.

“Listen, Draco,” Charlie said, turning serious. “It took me years to master the Forms. You’ve only just started. Give yourself the time you need, and in the meantime, I’ll be here to watch your back.”

Draco looked over, and Charlie’s eyes were a warm, honest blue, and he was smiling gently, the same way he smiled at his little sister sometimes, and in that moment, Draco loved him.

“Alright,” Draco said, blinking wetly. “And I’ll watch _your_ back.”

And he meant it. He would learn. Anywhere Charlie went, he would go. Submission would never be an option again. Somewhere, in the roiling pit of his mind, he heard laughter, and the echo of _“maybe there’s hope for you yet.”_

They returned to Grimmauld Place amid the preparation of lunch; Granger, Lupin, and Ginny were all assembling sandwiches in a line, while Severus sliced lemons in half with a deft knife, and Longbottom squeezed them over a pitcher. Black was dicing boiled potatoes into cubes, and attempting to make what looked like potato salad, only his house elf had taken to vanishing and replacing it every time Black turned away. It struck Draco as odd to see Granger home in the middle of the day, until he realized it was Saturday. It seemed even stranger to see Black without Lovegood hovering somewhere near his side. He wondered to himself, as he took a stack of plates and began to set the table with Charlie. Ginny levitated the large platter of completed sandwiches into the middle of the table, and Longbottom followed with the pitcher of lemonade and the bowl of potato salad.

“Where’s Lovegood?” he asked Ginny, as they all sat down to lunch. “And Thomas?”

“The Quibbler’s coming out,” Ginny replied. “Luna leaves most of the layout decisions to Dean and Lee Jordan, and Colin Creevey does all the photography, but she’s technically still managing editor, so she pitches in quite often. Actually, most of us do a guest columns, too; I do Quidditch commentaries, Hermione and Remus do editorials, Sirius writes an etiquette column under a pen name.”

Draco looks over at Black in disbelief, and Black shrugged.

“Maybe you and Charlie could do a column about something dragon-related. Everybody loves reading about dragon taming.”

“We _aren’t_ dragon-tamers, we’re _magizoologists,”_ he began, glaring at Ginny, and Charlie chuckled at him, shaking his head.

“Speaking of that, when do you boys start at the London Menagerie?” Ginny asked.

“Not this Monday, but the Monday after,” Charlie replied.

“Oh nice,” Ginny replied. “Same day I start practices again.”

“No shit? Hey what actually happened to get you benched, I heard you fell off your broom.”

“I didn’t _fall_ off my _broom,_ I got hit in the head with a Bludger, Charlie!”

The two of them started bickering, which carried them most of the way through lunch. He turned to Severus, who was sitting beside him picking tomatoes off of his sandwich with an ardent devotion, and he was happy to see Severus looking rather well.

“Severus? How are you feeling?”

“I think I’m quite recovered,” Severus replied. “Actually, I was planning on heading on my way tomorrow. I’ve been away from the shop for weeks, and I’m afraid I have quite a pile of backorders to attend to.”

“You’re leaving?” asked Black, surprised.

“Well, yes, Black. As much as I enjoyed being held hostage by your apprentice, I do have to get back to my shop. Some of us have to earn a living, you know.”

Draco was jolted by a sudden loss; he knew, logically, that Severus did not live here, but he had gotten used to being close to him over the weeks, and he didn’t want the man to disappear, as he was wont to do, into his laboratory. Charlie looked a bit forlorn as well; they had been halfway through reading the _Return of the King;_ Aragorn had been on his way to walk the Path of the Dead, and Charlie was dying to know what happened, but he seemed determined not to finish it without Severus and Draco.

The news of Severus’ departure put a damper on Draco’s mood. After lunch was over, he roamed the halls for a while, feeling sullen, then wandered back to his room. He stripped off his dirty clothes, tossed them in the hamper, and showered, running back through the cold room and hurriedly pulling on clean jeans and a t-shirt. As he reached for Charlie’s old Weasley sweater, which he had never returned, he caught sight of the record he had bought at the secondhand shop. _Glenn Miller and his Orchestra,_ it read. He considered it for a moment, and since he could think of nothing better to do, he wandered out into the house to find Ginny.

He finally located her in the back garden, where she sat on the ground behind the greenhouse, holding her snake, which she had dressed in what looked like several socks with the toes cut off, knitted together.

“What?” she demanded, glaring at his raised brows. “He’s cold-blooded. It keeps him warm.”

“I can’t believe you let that thing crawl all over you,” he said. House associations notwithstanding, he had been terrified of snakes since the very minute that the Dark Lord had set Nagini loose in his house.

“Weren’t you almost eaten by a basilisk as a child?” he asked, sitting on the ground at a snake-free distance.

“Well he’s hardly a basilisk, is he? You’re just a wee thing, aren’t you Wilbur?” she cooed, stroking it lovingly.

“What are you doing out in the cold?” he asked her.

“Growing things,” she replied, and at his confused expression, she held out her hand and let the white light of her magic pool in her palm. From the ground rose a thin, vinelike tendril of green, and it wrapped around her hand and began to crawl up her, spawning three-forked leaves as it grew.

“Ivy,” she said, smiling as it wound its way up her arm. “Wilbur likes to hide in it.”

The white light flickered out, and the green of the ivy glowed white, then vanished. He looked at her, wondering what sort of magic it was; he had never seen anything like it before.

“What’re you doing out here?” she asked.

“Looking for you,” he replied, holding out the square sleeve that contained his record. “I wondered if you might want to play this?”

“Oh!” she said brightly. “Sure!”

She jumped up and wrapped Wilbur around her neck, and Draco followed her, trying to block out the mental image of her being strangled slowly by a snake wearing a sweater. She reentered the house through a side door to the kitchen, and they crept through the foyer and past the portrait of Lady Black, snoring behind her curtain, past the staircase, and into a parlour. It was clearly one of the more inhabited rooms in the sprawling house; there were books piled beside an armchair, a Quibbler was draped across the arm of a sofa, there was a thick, fleecy blanket stretched out on the rug in front of the fire. On a table in the corner was what looked to be a wooden box, and beside the table were several crates jammed full of records.

Ginny walked over to the box and raised the lid, and Draco peered inside.

“This was Remus’ mum’s record player,” she said. “And most of these are her records. When his mum died, he brought it all with him to Hogwarts, and him and Sirius and Harry’s dad spelled it to run on magic instead of eckeltricity.”

She held out a hand, and Draco passed her the sleeve.

“Sometimes we all sit in here and listen to music after dinner, and Remus reads aloud, and Hermione always brings home the muggle newspaper, and she and Harry do the crossword together,” Ginny said. “Harry likes to do the crossword because his aunt and uncle would never let him do it when he was a kid. Sometimes Remus helps them, if they can’t figure out a word.”

She rambled on about domestic sorts of things, about the books they liked and the evenings they spent here, resting together in front of the fire, about her brother Ron, and about Potter, and Draco sat back and soaked up the little details of their lives.

“Everything feels so wrong without them,” she said, her voice an honest sadness.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

“Me too. But we know they’re alive; the clock says so. We’ll figure out how to get them back.”

And like that, the heaviness was gone from her, and she pulled his record out of its sleeve and slid it onto the spindle. With a press of a button, the record began to spin, and a bar moved over on its own, and dropped down onto it. She twisted another knob, and the sound of trumpets filled the room, trumpets and horns and pianos and drums. It nothing like any of the somber orchestras his father and mother had taken him to see; this music seemed to radiate energy, and joy. He stared at Ginny, struck dumb by the sound of it.

“It’s swing music,” she said, a wide, infectious smile spreading across her face. “You’re meant to dance to it; it’s really fun. Here, I’ll show you.”

“I already _know_ how to dance, Weasley, he said indignantly.

“Yeah, maybe stuffy ballroom waltzes,” she said, making a face. “This is different. Come on, it’s fun.”

She pulled him into the center of the room, ignoring his protests, and took both of his hands in hers, turning to face him.

“Alright, you’re the leading partner because you’re taller, so you step back with your left foot and sort of rock back on it, then shift your weight back onto your right foot. Then take your left foot and step to the side…bring your right foot together…now step to the side again. Right, now step back with your left foot and do the rock-step, alright now side-together-side back in the other direction…”

They repeated the same seven steps until they caught up with the music, and before long, the steps had become intuitive.

“Alright, now let’s do an underarm turn. On the rock-step, you’re just going to lift your left arm up a bit, and let go of my other hand, and there, I just go right under your left arm, and…now we’re back at the side-together-side.”

They tried it a few times, all together, picking up the pace to match the fast tempo of the music, and in spite of himself, he found himself grinning as Ginny turned beneath his arm. They danced that way until the song ended, and Ginny smiled up at him and let go of his hands. She flopped down on the sofa, shifting a book aside so Draco could sit beside her.

“Sirius loves to dance,” she said. “Remus barely tolerates it, so he taught me and Luna and Harry, and then I made Ron learn, and then everyone else started learning too. Sometimes we go into muggle London and Sirius takes us to the fancy ballrooms and we dance all night. Not much lately, though. It’s not the same without the boys, you know?”

Draco did not know, and in fact, Draco could not even fathom a universe in which Harry Potter and Ron Weasley went out on the town dancing in ballroom clubs, but Draco nodded his assent, trying to be supportive.

“Harry and I used to stay out half the night, and when the ballroom closed, we’d dance in the street under the streetlamps,” she said. “I miss it.”

In his mind, he could picture them, Ginny Weasley turning within the circle of Potter’s arms, him smiling down at her, laughing, green eyes happy and bright. Something twisted in his gut.

 _No,_ he told the feeling. _Absolutely not. Not again. I’ve lived through seven years of you. Go away and stay there._

He occluded hard, pushing the feeling down until it faded from his awareness. He had spent half his childhood wrestling with it. He was an adult now. No more.

Ginny had fallen silent, listening to the music and replaying some memory, no doubt, and after a while, she leaned into him, and the gesture was so reminiscent of Charlie that he almost laughed out loud. He wrapped an arm around her back and tucked her into his side, the same way Charlie had done to him that very morning, and he wondered, as she rested her weight against him, if it was a trait that all Weasleys shared, a familial habit of pressing into anyone who was close to them.

Finally, the record ended and the bar raised itself, the mechanical sound jarring him from his reverie. He rose and offered her his arm politely, and she took it as though it were completely natural, as though he had never mocked her family or laughed when she almost died, as though they had been walking arm-in-arm their whole lives. It was a bit funny, how bitter their rivalries had been once. If only his child-self could see him now, dancing to muggle music with Ginny Weasley in the ancestral home of his disgraced, blood-traitor cousin. All that animosity, and it had amounted to nothing.

“Ginny?” he asked.

“Hmmm?”

“I’m sorry. I was awful, back in school. To your entire family…I as awful.”

She looked up at him, cocking her head to the side.

“Oh, well. It was just kid stuff anyway. House rivalry and all that.”

“Yes, but I…Ginny, I let Death Eaters into the castle.”

_Charlie could have died. Charlie could have died in that battle, and I would never have gotten to meet him. You could have died. It could have been any of you, and it would have been my fault._

“You were trying to protect your family.”

“And in doing that, I almost got yours killed!”

“Draco,” she said, turning toward him and squeezing his hand, “You did the best you could with the person that you were at the time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	31. Draco Malfoy and the Magic of Its Own

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone was wondering, Draco is listening to Otis Redding, 
> 
> "I've Been Loving You Too Long"  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ6OrrkeVFo
> 
> "These Arms of Mine"  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUaO50nWnvg
> 
> Otis Redding is literal magic. I can imagine Draco listening to him and being bowled over.

The next week was what Draco considered the sorest in his life to date. He spent most of his days being tossed around like a ragdoll, slammed on his back, kneecaps digging into his shoulders, elbows pinning down his arms. Charlie was becoming progressively more ruthless, and just when Draco thought he had experienced every possible combination of ways to be hit by someone, Charlie added kicks and throws to their routine. But by the end of the week, Draco had come to hate being put on the ground so much that the instinct to strike back to keep his footing had overpowered the instinct to flinch away. He was still mostly helpless against Charlie, but he began to feel an awareness of his own body, as though something in it were waking up, and he knew that, at least physically, he was getting stronger.

And it wasn’t just physical training that he had to learn; Charlie was due to start at the London Menagerie in two days’ time, and he had set Draco to studying some of his old veterinary magizoology textbooks to prepare.

He spent most of his days camped out in the library beside Lovegood, Lupin, and George Weasley, who appeared to be using the leylines closest to the village of Sway to reverse-engineer some sort of geographic coordinate system, although none of them seemed to know exactly where it was they were trying to go. Charlie had separated his studies by species, in order of threat classification; he had already made his way through the XXX-classified creatures, and was just starting “Centaur, classification XXXX.” In the evenings, Granger would return from work and join them, and Draco would put down his texts and pick up a roll of parchment, translating runes or scouring through calculations, and after a while, it began to feel like being back at Hogwarts, spending his evenings in the library studying with Theo while Pansy read aloud, slowly, to Vince and Greg, and it felt peaceful, but with a bittersweet familiarity that he couldn’t quite break loose from.

After it became too late to concentrate, he would head to his room, sit on his floor, and stretch deeply, the way he did with Charlie every morning, to ward off the stiffness that settled in after long bouts of physical training. He seldom slept through the nights, and neither, it seemed, did anyone else.

He would often wake from dreams of ash and smoke and cold, red eyes, and a winding stone staircase that went up, and up, and he would stumble from his bed and flee from the darkness of his room down to the kitchen, which was always warm and always lit with the glowing, coppery light of the stove fire. And night after night, he would find his housemates sitting awake, chased from their own sleep.

The first night was Lovegood, on the floor, sitting with her back pressed against the pantry door, clutching the hairy form of Sirius-the-dog and crying silently into his fur. Draco had put on a pot of tea wordlessly, wondering what Potter would have done if here were here instead, whether Potter would have put an arm around her, or offered some profound, comforting wisdom, and he felt like an inadequate substitute, but he poured them both a cup just the same, not knowing what else to do.

Then it was Dean Thomas, who was pacing the kitchen floor staring down at his own hands, clenching and unclenching them, and he looked up, startled, when Draco shoved a cup into them, as if noticing him for the first time.

Several nights he sat up with Longbottom, who seemed never to sleep anymore, pulling double shifts and diving through the Floo at odd hours, whose shaking hands and exhausted, red-rimmed eyes were honestly beginning to worry him.

He discovered that Charlie would sneak out at night and go jogging through muggle London, and that Lovegood spent many early hours chatting with the mad portrait of Lady Black, and that Ginny’s nightmares were almost always violent in nature, and night after night, he would wake and head down to the kitchen, seeking company in his misery.

It was one of these nights that he found himself humming a melody from the record that he and Ginny had danced to. The melody had wormed its way into his brain and played itself in a loop until Draco began to wonder if he were going mad, and, unsure of what to do to stop it, he crept down to the first-floor parlour, opened the lid of the record-box, and selected a record from the crate beside the table at random. He slid the record in place, and hit the button, just like he had seen Ginny do.

The bar sprang to life and dropped down onto the spinning record, and Draco was wholly unprepared for what came from the machine.

_“I’ve been loving you_

_Too long_

_To stop now…”_

The melody had a sort of gentle mournfulness that made the hairs on Draco’s arms stand up. It picked up in tempo suddenly, and reached a crescendo.

_“You were tired_

_And you want to be free._

_My love is growing stronger_

_As you become a habit_

_To me.”_

The longing in the man’s voice was so heavy that Draco had to sit down, pulling his knees to his chest. It felt as though all the air had been sucked from his lungs.

_“Oh I been lovin’ you_

_A little too long,_

_And I don’t wanna stop now…”_

He felt the familiar burn of tears in his eyes, and he listened, oblivious to the world outside the parlour, buried in the layers of the music, enraptured.

_“I love you, I love you,_

_I love you with all my heart,_

_And I can’t stop now._

_Please,_

_Please,_

_Please, please don’t make me stop now...”_

He barely noticed the hot tears spilling down his own face as he tried to capture the song, to absorb it into himself somehow.

The next song began,

_“These_

_Arms_

_Of_

_Mine…”_

He looked up and Granger was there, staring down at him, and he felt a flush of hot shame at being caught crying on the floor, and he could hear his mother, snapping _“really, Draco, pull yourself together,”_ and he could feel the coldness in his father’s stony face as he turned away, disgusted.

But Granger sat beside him, her brown eyes tired but gentle. She had a knowing look, and she smiled at him.

“It’s rather lovely, isn’t it?” she asked, and all he could do was nod as the song crashed into him.

_“These arms of mine,_

_They are burning,_

_Burning from wanting you…”_

“I’ve always thought that muggle music was a sort of magic of its own,” she said.

“I think you might be right,” he said, barely a whisper.

She sat beside him, not speaking, a steadiness at his side, until the record finished and the bar lifted up, and he was suddenly, sharply grateful for her. He scooted back, leaning against the wall, and watched her thumb through records and pull one out, changing it with the deftness of practice, and they sat like that until the early hours, soaking in song after song.

When Draco finally made it to his bed, he laid down feeling as though the muggle music had become a part of him, as though its magic had seeped down through the cracks in him into some dark, empty space and lit it up with fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	32. Severus Snape and the Time He Accidentally Said That Out Loud

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be more Narcissa in the coming chapters. Next, Draco and Severus both get their minds blown.
> 
> TW for past abuse and past implied homophobia.

He had only been back at the shop for a week, and to his great dismay, his backlog hadn’t been as extensive as he’d thought. The work was mindless, orders for pimple-clearing potions and snoring ointment and scar remover that he could have made in his sleep, and it had only taken him a matter of days to have the lot of it brewed, bottled, and shipped off to the owl post. He had spent the rest of the time organizing ingredients, scrubbing cauldrons, scouring equipment, and finally, after he had dusted every crack and swept out every corner, there was nothing for him to do but go back to Spinner’s End.

He found himself pacing the floor there; he had grown used to the silence in the house, the feeling of aloneness as he sat in his father’s threadbare armchair and listened to the ancient wireless, or reread a novel for the hundredth time, but now, after spending weeks at Grimmauld Place, the silence felt oppressive.

They would have just started to fix dinner together, he realized, and he could almost hear the sound of Black bickering with his house-elf, the tea kettle whistling, the clanking of silverware as they set the table. He had never regretted his isolation before.

 _But,_ he told himself nastily, _you’ve never had anything to compare it to because you’ve never had any friends._

He wasn’t the sort to be dishonest with himself; he had missed a handful of people in his life, deeply and profoundly, but he had never experienced living with others, or at least not others who acted like they wanted him there, and now that he had gotten used to the companionship, he missed it with an intensity that surprised him.

He missed being close to Draco, who he had delighted in when he was a boy, who he had been so proud of. Draco, who he had shut out for seven years, to keep Dumbledore and the Dark Lord alike from ever knowing how much he cared for the boy. Draco, who didn’t understand the detachment, who grew further apart from him, breaking his heart by slow degrees, until finally, Severus pushed him away one too many times. He had been quietly delighted to spend his days of convalescence with his godson, listening to him chatter the way he had when he was a child, as if the yawning rift between them had never opened.

He missed Charlie, the rumble of his voice, gentle and low, reading aloud, the excitement lighting up his face boyishly as he turned the pages. The easy way he stretched out in the chair beside Severus’ bed and rambled, telling stories about chasing wild dragons on broomsticks and tracking poachers through the Alpine mountains and making it all sound easy, like it was all in a day’s work. He wondered about Charlie, about his scars and his stories and his mismatched constellation tattoo. He wondered, and the wondering was the mark of something dangerous.

He’d wondered about Lily, once, wondered from afar; from across a park and down a street and out an open window, until finally, the loneliness that lived in his home became more frightening than she was, and he followed her to the park one day and asked her if she was real, as if anything so lovely could really be real, and he loved her, when she reached out to hold his hand, he loved her in that instant and in every instant that came after.

He’d wondered about Narcissa, when she’d stepped in front of a hex from the tip of Rabastan’s wand and cast it aside with a haughty flick, when she’d commanded him to stand down with nothing more than a scornful _“really, Rab, don’t be coarse.”_ He’d wondered when she’d found him hiding in the prefects’ bathroom and cleaned blood off his face with a gentleness that betrayed her disinterested sneer. He’d stayed up half the night to watch her sneak out to go dancing and stumble back in on Lucius Malfoy’s arm at an hour that would have caused a scandal had her sisters seen it. He’d wondered until she finally caught him wondering and came over to run a sharp-red fingernail down his cheek and told him, _“it’s not that I blame you darling, but really, it would never work out between us,”_ and he had laughed out loud at the very thought of it, that she had gotten it so wrong. And the second she realized that he didn’t want her that way, that he wasn’t even capable of wanting her that way, she had clamped onto him and hadn’t let go since, and he had loved her, every knife-sharp, hellbent moment, he had loved her.

And Regulus…he saw Narcissa hug him once, all her edges softening as she pulled the boy against her and ran her fingers through his dark hair. And Severus had wondered what it would feel like to hug him, and he had wondered on repeat until he thought his brain would never be free of it, and one day, finally, he got an answer. And God, he’d loved Regulus Black. He’d loved the way the polished-marble stare would soften when he caught Severus’ eyes, and the way he leaned in, just close enough to brush shoulders when they walked. He’d loved the way Regulus held him with one hand cradling the back of his head, and the way he kissed him, rough and toothy and just a bit desperate, like he might never get another chance. He’d loved the way a smile would bloom across his face slowly, like a vine stretching toward light, the way the coldness and the distance would melt into autumn-warmth when he smiled at Severus, the way _that_ smile was for him, and him alone. He’d loved him…God, he’d loved him.

He was rather sick of wondering, if he was honest with himself. He was sick of the silence in the house. He went to bed sick, and woke up with the sickness still in him, and he fled to his shop to get away from the silence, but it was silent there too, just the way he’d made it.

And then, just when he began to talk to himself out loud just to hear the sound of it, the front door of the shop was flung open, and Ginny Weasley came stomping through.

“Hullo, Snape,” she said, peering past him. “Is this your lab? Can I see it?”

She brushed past him without waiting for assent, peering around at shelves and down into cauldrons, touching all his instruments, picking them up and examining them in turn.

“Miss Weasley. What are you doing in my shop…and _how did you get through my wards?!”_

“Wards?” she asked innocently. “What wards? Anyway, we’re having lunch at the Burrow; mum tried to owl you but you didn’t owl back.”

“Yes, usually when a person doesn’t _reply_ to correspondence, it means they don’t wish to _receive_ correspondence.”

“Oh, right! Silly to send an owl when I can just stop by.”

She grabbed his hand and tugged him.

“Come on, Snape, we’re going to be late.”

“Miss Weasley, I have absolutely no intention of-”

But Miss Weasley didn’t seem to care what his intentions were, and simply dragged him along by the arm as though she were leading a stubborn child.

“Miss Weasley! You will release me this instant! I have a business to run! I hardly have time to-”

“It’s alright,” she said. “Draco said he’d help you with your backlog. And Charlie. And I can help out too, if you want. We’ll work on it together after lunch.”

And with that, she grabbed his arm and apparated them before he could manage to break free.

They reappeared in the Burrow’s kitchen, and he glowered viciously at Ginny, but it seemed that whatever sort of power he had held over her as a girl was gone; she just smiled up at him and tugged his hand, and he found himself longing wistfully for the days when he could make her duck her head timidly with nothing more than a sharp glance.

It was shaping up to be a strange day; the only thing stranger than being kidnapped was the sight of Draco, covered in flour, kneading what looked like a mountain of dough with his bare hands.

“Oh, Severus! There you are!” cried Molly. “Oh, I’m so happy to see you! We’ve been worried sick. Ginny said you’d been hurt…are you feeling better?”

“Yes, quite,” he replied.

Draco looked up and grinned, and there was flour on the tip of his nose.

“Severus! You’re here! Are you staying for lunch? I’m helping make bread!”

Severus blinked at him, feeling off-balance.

“Draco is such a dear,” said Molly fondly. “Such a good helper.”

The very idea of Draco willingly performing anything that even vaguely resembled manual labor made Severus want to laugh out loud. Privately, he’d always thought the boy needed to learn to look after himself a bit, but to find him happily kneading dough in the kitchen of the Burrow, wearing one of Molly Weasley’s tatty old flowered aprons…Narcissa would _perish_.

“Duh he’s staying,” Ginny said, ushering him into a chair and passing him a cup of hot tea, a splash of milk and one lump, just the way he made it himself. Not knowing what else to do, he drank the tea, looking around the room and marking potential exits, and structural weaknesses that could be turned into exits, an old habit from well before the war with the Dark Lord, a habit he learned in childhood. Draco had picked up his bowl of dough and his rolling pin and come to sit beside him, and Severus scooted his chair over, eyeing the boy for any sign of having been confunded, or perhaps imperiused, but lo and behold, Draco’s brain seemed to be fully functioning.

And so it was that he found himself sitting at the Burrow’s kitchen table, making bread. Distantly, he wondered why Molly had chosen to do it the muggle way; she could have had it finished in minutes with a few flicks of her wand.

Through the window above the kitchen sink, he could see the silver-flash of a Patronus streaking across the yard. It came bursting through the window, a long-faced, sad-eyed bloodhound, and it spoke in Percy Weasley’s clipped tone.

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, mum, but there’s been another incident-you know the one I’m talking about-it looks like dad and I are going to be stuck at the office for lunch after all.”

The bloodhound flickered and vanished, and Molly looked at the place where it stood with a tight frown.

_An incident?_

“Well, I’ll need to Floo Arthur. I’ll leave this to you boys, then,” Molly said, patting Draco’s shoulder affectionately and bustling out of the room.

It was a soggy combination of damp and cold, with wet snow turning the earth to red mud, so they had lunch all jammed into the tiny kitchen, crowded in so that Ginny had to sit on Lovegood’s lap, and Severus was jammed tightly between Draco and Charlie, and after lunch the whole brood trekked down to the orchard beyond the Burrow’s garden to play a giant Seeker’s match on ancient broomsticks.

Granger and Longbottom declined the match, and surprisingly, so did Draco; he warmed the ground beneath a peach tree and Draco joined him, and they watched in amusement as Charlie caught the snitch eleven times within the span of about 15 minutes.

“How are you finding it so fast?” cried Thomas. “You’re like a…snitch-niffler!”

“Oi, Fred! Did you hear that?”

“A snitch-niffler!”

“That’s his new name!” cried George, “Charlie Snitch-Niffler Weasley!”

Draco chuckled to himself, and Severus looked up, raising a questioning brow.

“I’m definitely calling him Snitch-Niffler from now on,” Draco said, by way of explanation.

They were funny, Severus thought, the pair of them. Draco was willful, distrustful, and flatly unwilling to yield to anyone that did not demonstrate clear dominance. He wondered, remembering Draco leaping after Charlie the night of the werewolf attack, what had driven the boy after his mentor like that. At first, he had wondered if they were involved intimately, but it was obvious that Charlie regarded Draco with the same affection he had for his brothers and sister. How, he wondered, had the man brought Draco to heel, and more importantly, why? He loved his godson, but he was not blind; Draco was arrogant, entitled, and unused to physical work. Why had Charlie, and indeed, his entire family, adopted a boy who had spent his life mocking them? And what did Narcissa say, knowing that her son was oathbound to serve a Weasley as his mentor.

“Draco? How are you finding your studies?” he asked, turning to Draco and breaking the silence.

“Oh…quite well. I’ve completed three of the five basic knowledge exams for my apprenticeship, and I only need to complete two more practical exercises to be certified to handle XXXX-classified creatures without Charlie’s supervision. I’m looking forward to starting at the Menagerie…they have a Kappa exhibit on loan from Japan that I’m rather interested in.”

“Kappas,” Severus replied, not bothering to hide his disdain. “Which are known for suffocating their victims in shallow water. Charming, I’m sure.”

“Well yes, they’re awful creatures, but they have a very complex social structure,” Draco replied. “Did you know that Kappas co-parent their offspring for an average of thirty years before turning them out of their familial breeding ground? And it’s not uncommon for them to live with several generations in the same pond.”

“Fascinating,” Severus replied drily. “And what does your mother think of your studies?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” he replied tightly.

“What do you mean?” he pressed impatiently. “Surely you’ve been to see her?”

Draco looked up at him, and his face was flat.

“No,” he replied. “I’m not welcome in my mother’s home.”

“What’s all this, then?” Severus asked, bewildered.

“Severus,” he said, “I left. She told me to get out, so I left.”

“Come now, Draco, surely she didn’t-”

“No. She meant it. I told her my blood would die with me. That I would not marry or produce an heir. I’ve renounced my house, Severus.”

“Draco, what sort of _mad-”_

“I’m not _mad,_ Severus! I’m _gay!”_

 _Oh._ All these years, and he had never seen it. Draco sat ramrod straight, chin up, but the downtrodden look was so out of place on his haughty face that he could have been another person entirely.

“I see,” Severus replied.

“Aren’t you going to tell me what a fool I am?” Draco asked, and his voice was cold, but Severus could hear just the ghost of a tremor in it. “Aren’t you going to tell me I’ve shamed my family?”

“Hardly,” Severus replied. “It would be tremendously hypocritical of me.”

Suddenly realizing what he had done, he leapt to his feet, ignoring Draco’s look of wide-eyed shock. He had said too much; he felt open, unsafe. He looked around wildly, as though someone might have heard him, and then, unable to meet Draco’s eyes, he disapparated.

When he reappeared at Spinner’s end, the echo of his father was with him; the echo of _“no son of mine,”_ and a leather strap. He paced the floor, missing the man, whose bitter anger had, at least, filled up the silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	33. Draco Malfoy and the Guest That Came to Tea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello folks, 
> 
> It feels like I haven't updated in forever, and that is because everything has gone a bit nuts with the Coronavirus. I am currently quarantined, so I guess it's update time! 
> 
> Oh, also...Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Feel free to add me, ask me stuff, send me prompt ideas, spam my messages, etc.

Of all of his days, Draco had certainly had worse, but this day was putting in a solid effort toward disaster. Charlie had beaten him more aggressively than usual, and when he had finished his physical beating, his brain had dished out a mental one, forcing him to meditate on what must have been thousands and thousands of stairs.

And finally, when Charlie was satisfied that he had been reduced to nothing more than a wrung-out sponge, they had been half-assaulted by Molly Weasley the second they walked through her kitchen door.

“Oh, _Charlie!”_ she howled, “I’ve been so worried!”

She flung herself at Charlie, bawling, and Charlie smooshed her against him, laid his cheek on top of her head and murmured to her in the same soothing tone that he might use to calm a startled dragon, and then, to Draco’s utter horror, she seized him too, crushing her sopping, tear-stained cheek against his shoulder and wailing.

“Mum, what’s going on?” Charlie asked gently. “We’re all right, what’s…what’s all this?”

Then, abruptly, she straightened up, wiped her eyes, took a deep, fortifying breath, and carried on as though nothing had happened, fussing at them to shake the snow off their boots and pouring them both a steaming cup of tea.

“It’s stress,” Charlie had told him as soon as she was out of earshot. “She misses Ron and Harry. She used to get like this during the war…”

Charlie was troubled for a while, but Mrs. Weasley seemed to have genuinely returned to herself, bustling around and gathering the trappings of lunch.

“May I do anything, to help, Mrs. Weasley?” he asked politely, approaching her slowly and cautiously and stopping safely outside of hugging distance.

“Oh, sure you can, Draco dear. Have you ever baked homemade bread?”

The rest of lunch had been largely uneventful, and then, there was the revelation. _“It would be tremendously hypocritical of me,”_ Severus had said. That could only mean…and then, he’d bolted off before Draco could even ask him, and _could he really have spent his entire life knowing Severus and somehow completely missed it?_

He was just debating whether it would do any good to owl the man, when Mrs. Weasley’s red head popped out of the kitchen window and hollered,

“DRAAACOOOOO!”

She caught sight of him and waved for him to come in, so he got up and made his way back across the orchard and through the garden and found her standing in the doorway, beckoning to him.

“Come on in, dear, you have company here to see you.”

He stopped.

“Company?”

“Yes, Draco. In the den. Your friend came to tea. Isn’t that nice?”

He cocked his head. Friend?

“But Mrs. Weasley, are you sure there’s someone here to see…me?”

“Yes, dear, now come along. You’re letting the cold air in.”

He hastened inside, and she thrust a tea tray and a plate of biscuits at him.

“There you are, now don’t keep the poor boy waiting, Draco, it isn’t polite.”

He frowned down at the tray. Clearly, he had stumbled into a parallel universe where Molly Weasley, whose children regularly broke out into fistfights and turned each other’s hair into snakes, lectured him about his manners. Before she could chide him further, he hurried out of the kitchen.

The fire was already crackling in the hearth when he stepped inside the den, and standing before it, inspecting the dusty volumes that adorned the mantle top, was Theodore Nott. He had gotten taller, was taller than Draco now. When he turned to look at Draco, there was Floo dust smeared across one freckled cheek.

“Oh, there you are. I’ve found you,” he said.

Draco set the tray down on the coffee table in front of the tattered sofa and slipped his arms around Theo, and like always, he froze, stock-stiff for a moment, before wrapping his arms around Draco's back and pulling him close.

“Greg said you were staying with the Weasleys,” said Theo, his characteristic, flat voice close against Draco's ear. “I asked Hermione if she knew where you were. She said I could come to tea if I wanted. I came through the Floo.”

“Yes, I see that,” Draco replied. “How do you know Granger…er…Hermione?”

“She's my colleague,” said Theo.

“You’re an Unspeakable?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Figures,” Draco said.

Theo stood there for a moment, letting Draco cling to him. Then he said,

“Draco? Where have you been? Why are you staying with the Weasleys?”

Draco sighed deeply. Theo looked at him in alarm.

“Romania,” said Draco. “I’ve taken up study under Charlie Weasley.”

“Charlie Weasley? The author of “Formation and Maturation of Phase-Separated Luminescence Incidents in Demiguise-Based Refraction Episodes?”

“Er…”

Theo’s eyes lit up the way they always did before he was about to delve way further into a topic than anyone around him was prepared to go.

“His work with the acid-dissolution of demiguise fur was foundational in the discovery of inverse-light. He revolutionized modern understanding of invisibility!”

“Oh, er…yes. That’s Charlie…always revolutionizing…”

Theo’s eyes crinkled at the corners, just slightly, a gesture Draco knew to mean the usually-expressionless boy was scrutinizing him.

He sighed again.

“What is it, Theo?”

“Draco…I was only wondering, but…why did you take up study in magizoology? And…you said the whole Weasley family was a pack of brainless, muggle-loving-”

“Yes!” Draco said loudly, cutting him off and looking around the Weasleys' sitting room in alarm. “Yes, I said a lot of things, Theo, and…I’m sorry.”

Theo raised his eyebrows a bit, which was, for him, the equivalent of utter shock.

Theo had been a strange child, stone-faced and rarely smiling, with a flat, slow cadence and a tendency to go on endlessly about dry facts, and he had an intensity about him that scared the other children, but he had been Draco's first friend. Finally, Draco released him from the hug, leaned back, and took a look at him.

His hair, straight and almond brown, was longer now than the close buzz that he had worn in school, and he had it parted smartly on one side. He had a smattering of freckles across his pale nose, like he’d been out in the sun, and he wore plain, black robes that buttoned up to the throat and a billowing, thick winter cloak, and he’d always been sort of unfairly handsome, but after more than a year of quietly missing him, he was the most beautiful thing Draco had ever seen, and Draco hugged him again just because he could.

“I said a lot of things. I was wrong about most of them. Just do me a favor and never listen to me again.”

He looked up at Theo, holding his honey-brown gaze, and Theo looked away, then back for a moment, then away again.

“Alright,” he said uncertainly.

He had been so…loud. As a boy, he had been so wrong and so loud about it. And all his friends had chimed right in, laughing at what he laughed at and mocking who he mocked, except Theo, who would sit cross-legged at the foot of Draco’s bed and argue in his gently academic way, _“well, yes, Draco, but numerous peer-reviewed studies have shown with extremely high reproducibility that there is no correlation between blood status and magical capacity…”_

Draco had, as was his habit, waved him off, insisting upon his own narrow understanding. And Theo had nodded along too, in the end. He’d trusted Draco’s word over his own powerful intellect, and the thought of that made Draco’s gut twist unpleasantly.

Finally, he peeled himself away and sat on the lumpy old sofa, pouring Theo a cup of tea with milk and no sugar and himself a cup black with two sugars.

Before he could take so much as a sip, Ginny stomped through the door, followed by Granger. Theo leapt to his feet.

“Oh, hello Theo!” said Granger brightly.

“Miss Granger,” he replied, bowing politely

“You can call me Hermione, you know,” she chided gently.

“Hermione, then,” he said.

His face remained flat, but he stiffened slightly, the way a rabbit tenses before it runs. Calling an unmarried woman by her given name was the sort of social error that would have earned the wrath of Theo’s father. The man had been exacting and cruel in the extreme, and any deviance from expected pureblood niceties had been punished hardheartedly. 

He extended an arm politely, and she placed her hand on it and seated herself primly on the sofa beside Draco.

“Thank you, Theo.”

“I’m at your service, Miss Gr- er…Hermione.”

He was looking up at Ginny expectantly, waiting, as was customary, for the lady to introduce herself first. Ginny just stood and gawked at him as though he were some kind of unfamiliar animal, and Draco wondered how to explain Theo; how to make her understand that the rituals of propriety had literally been beaten into him.

“Hullo,” she said, eyeing him suspiciously. “I’m Ginny Weasley. I was a year behind you, I think.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Weasley. Theodore Nott, at your service.”

He bowed again, and offered his arm.

“My service?” she asked. She snagged a biscuit from the plate, snapped it in half, and handed a half to Theo, who took it, looking bewildered.

“He wants you to sit down,” Draco said, feeling a bit protective. “He can’t sit down until he’s offered you a seat.”

“It would hardly be proper,” Theo added gently.

“So you’re just going to stand there all day until I sit?” Ginny asked, looking up at him and crunching the end off her biscuit.

“If the lady wishes,” he replied, a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

She stared at him a second longer, then shrugged, perching herself on the arm of the sofa beside Draco, and reaching to pour a cup of tea.

Finally, Theo sat, still awkwardly clutching his biscuit-half.

“They’re good,” she offered, chomping into hers again. “Chocolate chip.”

He watched her for a moment before finally biting it stiffly.

“I’m glad you’ve come to tea, Theo,” Granger said, reaching for a teacup. “Draco, Theo tells me all about you at work. We work in the Time Room together, you know.”

“You’re an Unspeakable?” asked Ginny, looking up in interest. “That’s pretty cool. What do you do in there all day? ‘Mione won’t ever tell me anything.”

“I’m afraid I can’t say,” he said, offering a small, close-lipped smile. “It’s classified.”

“Ugh. No fun.”

“Theo,” Granger said, “Ginny plays professional Quidditch.”

“Yes,” he replied. “For the Holyhead Harpies. I follow them in the paper.”

“You like the Harpies?” Ginny asked, lighting up.

“Oh, yes. I’ve followed them since I was a boy. My Father and Gwendolyn Morgan both played for Slytherin, and he always followed her matches. He even took me to one, once. I read that you’d been put on the bench?”

“Oh, well...yeah. Took a bludger to the head. But I start back at practice tomorrow. You’ll have to come to the next match. Charlie and Draco are going!”

“We are?” asked Draco.

“Well Charlie is. He’s never been to a match yet because he loves stupid dragons more than his baby sister and he's been chasing them around Romania for years. But now he lives here again, so he has no excuse.”

She leaned across Draco and Hermione and mock-whispered to Theo, “And if Charlie goes, Draco will go too because he follows Charlie around like a lost puppy.”

“I do _not_ follow him around,” Draco grumbled.

Theo looked back and forth between Ginny and Draco, trying to decide if she was telling a joke, then finally settled on an awkward, belated laugh.

Ginny stuck her tongue out at Draco, then stretched, grabbed another biscuit, and rose to her feet.

“Well, mum’s gone to the Ministry to take lunch to Percy and Dad, so we’re about to head home. Bill’s going to be back from Egypt soon, and the twins are coming over to help me curse a bunch of his stuff. Are you boys coming?”

Theo looked at Draco as though his face might somehow hold clarification.

“It’s a Gryffindor thing,” he muttered under his breath. “They like to try to kill each other for fun.”

As it turned out, Ginny was not exaggerating; the Weasley clan, including Percy, who came in late from the Ministry, gathered around the kitchen table at Grimmauld Place and set about cursing what looked to be the stolen contents of Bill Weasley’s entire Gringotts office.

Draco tried unsuccessfully to corner Theo alone; as pathetically relieved as he was to see him, he needed Theo to understand why he had kept him at a distance, and why it was important for that distance to remain. He wouldn’t drag Theo through the mud just because he was too selfish not to miss him.

But Theo had been sucked right into the Weasleys’ orbit; withing minutes of meeting Charlie, the two of them buried themselves in a deep conversation about the properties of demiguise fur and their applications to the magical wavelengths of light, and they didn’t surface for air for what seemed like an hour. Percy, who was in the middle of applying a toenail-growing hex to a silver inkpot, caught Theo’s eye and proceeded to launch into a shockingly dry analysis of the economic impact of the top-down reconstruction of the Ministry’s organizational hierarchy, and he was so pleased by the boy’s rapt attention that he invited him to tea the next week with several recently-recategorized department heads. Ginny quizzed him relentlessly about Harpies trivia in between cursing a pair of polished black dress shoes with a rather advanced stinking hex, then promised to owl him a ticket to her upcoming match. Fred and George went about setting a pile of brass drawer-handles to turn into snakes when they were pulled, “in recognition of our newfound inter-house unity,” and offered to give Theo a tour of their shop next time he was in Diagon Alley.

Every time he tried to get a word in edgewise, Theo was dragged away by some red head or another, and by the time they walked him to the Floo to bid him goodnight, Draco was feeling rather cross.

“He’s a good sort, Draco,” said Percy approvingly after Theo had vanished into the flames. “I was quite intrigued by his views on the restructuring; perhaps he’d like to give a talk at the next all-staff meeting.”

“Ask him next time he’s here,” Ginny replied. “I keyed him to the wards, so he can come for tea whenever he likes.”

“Wait a second…I’m not even keyed to the wards yet!” Draco whined.

“Whoops,” she said, shrugging.

The Weasleys showed no sign of dispersing; rather, they spent the evening sitting around the house bickering, hitting each other, and occasionally singing, and the cacophony drove Draco to bed early, where he rolled around in his bed, worrying about how to handle Theo, wondering what Severus was doing, wondering whether Severus was really…was he? How had Draco never…noticed? And what else had he not noticed? He had been told once that he didn’t “see” other people, but perhaps for the first time ever, he was aware of his own obliviousness.

 _“I think you like the idea of me,”_ Theo had told him, once, the night they broke it off for the last time. _“But it’s like you don’t see me, or…anyone really. It’s like you don’t care enough to even look.”_

He fell asleep thinking of Severus, and wondering if it was too late now to really know him.


	34. Charlie Weasley and the Mandatory Breakfast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Ginny has no time for Severus' bullshit, Charlie is embarrassed, and everyone goes back to work.

The morning had been, as far as he was concerned, a resounding success. Draco had come a long way in just under a month; he had made it the whole way through their morning training without ending up on the ground once, and he’d managed a really stellar reversal of a hip throw that had _almost_ landed Charlie on his arse. It got better when he arrived at breakfast to find Severus at the table; it had been strange without him around.

He was looking rather bitter, and glaring daggers at Ginny, who was chatting away happily, completely oblivious.

“Oh, hello Severus. Are you alright?" Charlie asked. "Did you get hurt again?”

“No,” Severus snarled in irritation, “I was dragged here for breakfast by your unrelenting lunatic of a sister, and you can rest assured that the second I get back to my shop, I’ll be warding it to port the next Weasley who crosses my threshold directly to the northernmost reaches of the North Pole!”

Charlie felt his face heating.

“Ginny,” he hissed. “You can’t _drag_ people to breakfast. Severus has work to do! He doesn’t want you mucking around in his shop.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Charlie! He needs to eat! You know what he was having? A bit of dry toast!”

She reached over and seized Severus by the chin, and jerked his head toward Charlie.

“Look at how pale he is!” she cried, as he scrambled wildly out of her grip.

“He’s a _grown man_ , Ginevra. He can eat whatever he wants for breakfast!”

“There you are,” she said, piling bacon and eggs on a plate and setting it in front of him.

“Miss Weasley, I am _dying_ to know what has inspired this wholly unnecessary-”

“Don’t forget the juice,” Draco cut in, marching through the kitchen door, seizing a glass pitcher, and pouring it into Severus’ glass.

“Draco, what on earth-”

“Orange juice is his favorite,” he said, turning to Ginny and ignoring the man’s spluttering.

“Alright, both of you! Leave Severus alone and eat your own breakfast.”

Severus, red-faced and utterly livid, turned to Charlie, opening and closing his mouth like a fish, seeming lost for words.

“Sorry about her,” he said gently, watching Ginny and Draco pile food onto their plates. “She can be really protective. I’ll talk to her.”

Severus stared at him with an almost injured sort of confusion, and Charlie felt a little twist of his own protectiveness. It hadn’t escaped him the way the man reacted to concern as though it was an abstract concept, like something he had only read about and never seen.

After another minute, Luna came down with Hermione and Dean, followed by Neville, who was walking with his eyes closed, leaning against Dean for support.

The kids looked rough; he wasn’t going to lie. He was half-tempted to have words with Tonks about the way she was running Neville’s feet off, and honestly, Hermione didn’t look much better.

“You two get any sleep?” he asked.

Neville laid his cheek against the cool tabletop and grunted.

“A bit,” Hermione replied. “I think I’ve figured something out though. About our coordinate system, I mean.”

“No talking about math until after breakfast,” Dean groaned, throwing himself down beside Ginny and leaning his head against her. “I need caffeine.”

“I wasn’t going to,” she grumbled. “Where’s Remus? I want to run something by him.”

“Run what by me?” Remus asked, making his way through the kitchen with Sirius padding in after him.

“I have an idea; I checked out a book about integrals from the library, and-”

“Hermione,” Remus said tiredly, “No math until after caffeine.”

“I tried to tell her,” Dean said.

She glared at him pointedly.

Ginny got up, causing Dean to slide off her shoulder, and put a pot of coffee on, and the smell of it brewing seemed to make Neville stir a bit.

“Snape, are you coming over for dinner?” Ginny asked, pouring black coffee into an oversized mug. “We’re working in the library after, and Theo Nott might come by- you know him, right? He was in Slytherin.”

“Nott?” he asked, looking between her and Draco.

“Yes,” said Draco, “Theo came for tea at the Burrow after you…er-left.”

“Theodore Nott? At the Burrow?”

“Oh, I invited him,” Hermione piped up. “We work together, you know.”

“I see,” Severus replied as though he didn't quite believe her.

“Alright, Nev, up we get,” Ginny said, holding her full mug carefully as she walked. She wrestled him into the sitting position with one arm, held the mug up to his lips, and tilted the coffee into his mouth until his hands came up and grabbed it. He groaned in appreciation, and Ginny rolled her eyes fondly at him, smiling wryly at Severus before returning to her breakfast.

Charlie eyed Severus, who seemed relieved to have evaded the invitation. It was probably a bit misguided of him, but…Charlie had sort of enjoyed Severus’ convalescence. As a boy, he’d always been a little fascinated with the man, with the intensity of him, the fierce intelligence, the way he stared, unblinking, at anyone who dared to catch his eye. He’d always been a little breathless at the biting sarcasm and the hint of bitterness that snapped its teeth behind every word, and he'd wanted to know what had put it there. And...he was a bit embarrassed about it now, but he’d followed him around the dungeons. Severus had been relatively patient with his academic questions, but getting anything personal out of him had been like cleaning a dragon's teeth.

Charlie had been, in a twisted way, sort of pleased to find Severus vulnerable, in too much pain to snarl when a hand slipped into his. He’d squirreled away little bits of Severus, the way he leaned in a bit when Charlie read aloud, the way the corners of his lips would curve up against his will when he tried not to smile, the way he startled when someone touched him, jerking away like he’d been burned, the way he would tilt his head just the tiniest bit to the side when he was curious about something. It seemed the fascination had never really gone away.

“You should come by,” Charlie said quietly, leaning in to speak close to Severus’ ear. “We’ve missed having you around.”

Severus’ eyes flashed, and Charlie shrunk back a bit.

“I doubt that,” he said nastily.

“Well, I have,” Charlie replied evenly, schooling the hurt out of his expression. Severus looked at him with that same confusion.

“Alright,” he said, after a long silence. “Perhaps if I…finish early at the shop.”

“Alright, then,” said Charlie, feeling a stupid grin spread across his face.

“What are you smiling about, dummy?” Ginny asked him, kicking him gently in the shin.

“How nice it’s gonna be not to have to look at your face all day,” he shot back.

“Pshh. Whatever. You’re gonna miss me.”

“Hardly.”

“You’re going to _pine.”_ She looked over at Draco. “He pines,” she said, smirking at Draco’s amused look.

“I’m going to jump on the table and dance the second you’re through the Floo,” he shot back.

“Well you won’t have to wait long. I’ve got to head off; I’m due at practice in ten minutes.”

She scourgified her plate with an efficient flick of her wand, and hugged each of her friends in turn, plopping a loud, smacking kiss on Luna’s forehead. She gave Remus a quick squeeze, thumped Sirius on the back, and even hugged Draco quickly, leaning in to whisper something that made him chuckle quietly to himself. She walked over, flung her arms dramatically around Charlie, and squeezed him as hard as she could, which was, Charlie could admit, rather impressive for someone so small. And then, to his surprise, she threw an arm companionably around Severus and squeezed his shoulder once, quickly, before turning and bustling out of the room. Charlie peered at Snape out of the corner of his eye; the man had frozen in what appeared to be some variation of terror. Finally, just as Charlie was about to ask if he was alright, he relaxed minutely, and schooled the wide-eyed alarm off of his face.

“Well I suppose I’d better be off too, then,” Neville said, draining the dregs of his mug and banishing it to the sink.

One by one, the rest of the table dispersed; Hermione and Dean to take a trip into London to visit Dean’s mum at the university, Luna and Sirius to pay house calls to patients, and Remus to Floo to the Ministry, for some business he didn’t quite catch.

“Well, Draco, I suppose we’d better be off. Go up and get ready for work; you’re going to need your boots and heavy gloves.”

“I know how to dress myself, Charlie,” he grumbled.

Severus rose to leave, clasping Draco on the shoulder, and turning to Charlie.

“I suppose I shall see you this evening,” he said, almost shyly, and Charlie felt a blush creeping up his neck.

“Until then,” he replied.

And with a swish of his robes, Severus turned and left, with Charlie staring stupidly after him.

“Charlie?” Draco asked. “Don’t you have to get ready?”

“Oh! Er…yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	35. Draco Malfoy and the Intention to Pay Attention

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no! Not Theo! What will become of him? Will Draco ever be able to look Lupin in the eye again? Will poor Neville ever get to go to bed? We shall see in the coming installements!
> 
> Trigger warnings: memories of past sexual content, embarrassing erections.

Draco had watched Charlie like a hawk the whole day at the Menagerie; he’d fallen asleep with the sense that he had failed, somehow, in his unmindfulness, like he’d been missing out on something important his whole life, and when he woke up, he realized he wanted it, whatever it was. So he watched Charlie, and before long, he began to notice.

Charlie walked with a slight limp. Charlie smiled to himself sometimes without realizing it. Charlie was ambidextrous.

The more he noticed, the more he wanted to know. What had happened to his leg? What was he thinking about? Was he born without a dominant wand-hand, or did he teach himself to use both? It wasn’t the first time he’d wondered things about Charlie, but it was the first time he cared that he didn’t know the answer.

Their work at the Menagerie was a lot more involved than he expected; by the end of the day, he’d had to relearn the rune for heat to repair an occamy-egg incubator, jump into a tank full of Grindylows, brew a nutritive potion for an underweight erumpet, heal a large gash on a porlock’s flank, and remove an egg lodged in a runespoor’s mouth. He also learned a series of diagnostic spells to detect heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature; standard healing spells, but new to Draco nonetheless. Normally, they worked on an on-call basis, but in the month that the position had been empty, it seemed the work had piled up. After tending to immediate illnesses and injuries, they spent the rest of the day brewing, restocking healing and nutritive potions that had been almost completely depleted.

By the time they made it back to Grimmauld Place, Draco was exhausted.

“Never realized how much goes into it, huh?” Charlie said, jabbing him in the side with an elbow. “Bet you thought folks like Hagrid and me were a bunch of buffoons that rolled around in dung all day.”

“Hagrid is a buffoon,” Draco grumbled.

“Hagrid taught me everything I know. He could be doing that job himself.”

Draco scoffed.

“Then why doesn’t he?”

“That’s…not really my place to say,” Charlie said.

And, in a turn of events Draco could not have predicted for anything, he found himself curious about Hagrid…if he was as knowledgeable as Charlie seemed to think, why had he spent his whole life as a gamekeeper?

Charlie had refused to say, but he wondered if Granger would know. She had been close to the giant. He thought of asking her, but when he followed Charlie down to the kitchen, she wasn’t there.

Severus, on the other hand, was. He was dicing tomatoes and passing them down to Lupin to be mashed, watching warily as Black and his elf wrestled over a spatula. Severus looked over at Charlie, who broke into a grin, and Draco just _watched_ as a smile began to tug itself across Severus’ face.

“You’re here,” said Charlie.

“Yes,” Severus replied, looking away.

It was seldom that he saw Severus smile, and he had never seen him break eye contact with anyone. Strange. It was…strange, he thought. But before he could ask Charlie about it, Lovegood pulled a tray of meatballs from the oven, and declared dinner to be done.

They were halfway through the meal, when Thomas trudged through the kitchen door, followed by an exhausted-looking Granger.

“Where’ve you two been?” Ginny asked, pushing her plate closer to Thomas as he snagged a piece of her garlic toast.

“The Department,” Granger replied, summoning herself a plate and piling spaghetti onto it ungracefully. “Dean and I were working with Theo…based on the calculations we’ve all been doing, we’ve proved definitively that the rune coordinates lead to somewhere that isn’t a location on earth, which means we can rule out the _portus_ charm, as well as any tracking or summoning spell…”

The table seemed to collectively droop at the news, and Black visibly flinched.

“You mean we did all that just to prove that we don’t know where they are?” Draco asked, incredulously.

“Well, yes,” Granger replied testily. “We had to rule out spells that are limited to this plane of existence. Now we know we have to look at magic that’s tied to other realities, like banishing spells, or invocations of nonbeing. Theo had an idea…apparently, there’s a blood spell that can…oh, don’t make that face, Neville, it’s not necessarily dark just because it’s blood magic…there might be a way to adapt a blood spell to invert a summoning-”

She was cut off midway by a silver flash; it ripped through the room, startling Severus so badly he nearly upset his chair, and sending everyone scrambling to their feet. In the center of the table, the silver coalesced into the shape of a Cooper’s Hawk, and echoed the voice of a harried-sounding Nymphadora Tonks.

“I hope you’ve gotten a nap in, Longbottom, because there’s been another attack. Theodore Nott, from Mysteries. Grabbed him right out of the Ministry Atruim and dragged him off. Sorry to do this to you, but I need you back here!”

Longbottom, who had been half-dozing the whole way through dinner, leapt to his feet, suddenly alert. It was strange to watch in active time, the sight of sleepy, soft-spoken, clumsy Longbottom sharpening into something hard-edged and focused in the seconds before he disapparated.

Ginny looked over at Lupin.

“If he’s only just been taken…”

“Right. I might be able to track him,” Lupin said, looking around the table. “Sirius, you should come too. Hermione, is there anything of Theo’s at the office? If they travelled on foot, Padfoot might be able to scent them.”

“He keeps a travelling cloak in his locker,” Granger replied. “I’ll fetch it. Meet me in the Atrium.”

“Right,” Black replied. “Luna. Let’s go.”

The four of them disapparated.

“Charlie,” Draco said, not bothering to disguise the note of pleading in his voice.

“Alright. We should all go,” he said, looking at Thomas and Severus. “We can help the search teams on foot.”

He held out an arm, and Draco grabbed it, trying to force down the panic that was stirring in his belly.

 _What in the world would anyone want with Theo?_ _He’s just…_

 _An Unspeakable with a high security clearance and God-knows-what kind of access to the innermost secrets of the Department of Mysteries,_ his brain supplied. _He’s not a kid anymore. He knows classified Ministry intel. Someone could be torturing him for information right now…But…about what?_

When they reappeared in the alley across from the loo that served as the employee entrance to the Ministry, Lupin was there with Black, who was barking at a tall, slender, blue-haired woman.

“You can’t just barge into an active investigation!” she cried.

“Dora,” Lupin snapped, “with all due respect, you need all the help you can get.”

“Let them, Tonks,” Longbottom said. “Remus is right. We’re barely functioning. We need their help, protocol be damned.” There was a resignation in his voice, and it seemed to sway the woman.

“Alright,” she said finally. “We’re going to set out on foot. As soon as Hermione gets back, you can form your own search party. We’ve got wartime protocol exceptions that are still on the books. If anyone questions you, say I’ve placed you under emergency conscription measures. Communication is by patronus only, so make sure there’s at least one person with you who can cast one.”

“I found it,” yelled Granger, jogging over and squatting down before Black, cloak in hand.

“Right,” the woman replied. “Be careful.”

She turned and disapparated, followed closely by Longbottom.

Sirius began pacing the cobbled street, nose pressed to the ground, tail high like a flag. Meanwhile, Lupin and Ginny stood back-to-back, eyes closed, muttering to themselves. A watery-blue light began to shimmer around them.

“Ginny?” Charlie asked. “What are you-”

“Shut up, Charles. I’m concentrating.”

Sirius barked once, then took off at a trot, stopping now and then to nose the ground.

“He’s got something,” Granger cried. “Let’s go!”

She took off after him, followed by Thomas.

“Luna,” Ginny said, dropping her spell suddenly. “Aren’t you going with them?”

“No,” Lovegood replied, looking rather unhappy about it. “Sirius says it’s foolish not to split Healers between groups.”

“Oh…right,” Ginny replied.

“Remus, I’m not getting anything, and I don’t think I’m going to,” said Ginny.

Lupin broke his spell.

“Go with them, then,” he told her.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. It’s going to take me some time to even pick up a signature, and every minute counts right now.”

“Right,” she said, turning on her heel and jogging off.

“Wait!” he cried.

She skidded to a stop.

“Be careful.”

She smiled, jogged back over, and threw her arms around him.

“I will,” she said. She turned to Draco.

“Oi. Keep my dumbass brother out of trouble, ok?”

Before he could reply, she sprinted away.

He looked up at Charlie, and he was watching Lupin with a dark look cast across his face.

“Severus,” said Lupin solemnly. “I know have no right to ask, but…would you go with Ginny? She can be…impulsive.”

“What of Draco?” said Severus, looking over at him.

“Draco is my responsibility,” Charlie cut in. “And for that matter, so is Ginny-”

“Severus, you have my word that I’ll look after Draco and Charlie both.”

At that, Charlie glared openly, but before he could retort, Severus turned on his heel and stalked away.

“I’m warning you now, Lupin,” he shot over his shoulder. “I’ll be holding you responsible.”

“Of course,” Lupin said gently to his retreating back.

Charlie stepped toward Lupin as though he meant to say something, but Lupin had already begun muttering to himself again. Beside him, Lovegood was waving her wand in a complicated pattern.

“What are they doing?” Draco whispered.

“Fuck if I know,” Charlie grumbled back, his expression stormy.

Several minutes passed in silence, then suddenly, Lupin dropped his spell.

“Any luck?” he asked Lovegood.

“No. I couldn’t make sense of the signatures…it’s like a big knot.

“There’s a lot of traffic through this area,” said Lupin. “I’m having trouble too. It works a lot better if…oh! Draco! Didn’t you say you and Theo were friends at school?”

“Of course,” Draco snapped, feeling suddenly unaccountably irritated with the man, as though Charlie’s mood were contagious. “We’ve been friends since we were born.”

“Right, then,” Lupin replied, ignoring his tone. “It’s exponentially easier to track someone’s magic if you know what the magic feels like. I can almost remember his magic from when I taught you lot, but it’s…vague.”

“What…do you want me to do?” Draco asked. He didn’t even know the incantation for a tracking spell, and he’d heard always heard it was difficult to cast and nearly impossible to maintain.

“Are you able to identify magical signatures?” Lupin asked.

“No,” Draco replied miserably. “I didn’t even know that was…I wouldn’t have known to try that.”

He felt useless. The panic was welling up in his chest again.

“It’s alright,” Lupin replied, laying a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not a common skill. I’d have been more surprised if you’d said yes.”

He squeezed Draco’s shoulder, and took a deep, uncomfortable breath.

“There is a way…for me to retrieve an impression of Theo’s magic. I would have to use Legilimency.”

“Alright,” Draco said, just as Charlie said, “Fuck no.”

Charlie stepped forward, pushing Lupin’s hand away and standing between him and Draco.

“Like hell you’re going to go fucking around in his head,” Charlie said, his voice low and bordering on threatening.

“Believe me, I wouldn’t even consider it if there were any better alternative,” Lupin replied gently. “But without a better impression of Theo’s magical signature, I can’t-”

“Just do it,” Draco said, elbowing Charlie roughly in the side. “Move over, Charlie. It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. There’s no time to waste talking about it. Just get it over with, please, Lupin.”

“Alright, then,” Lupin replied in the mild tone Draco recognized as his teacher-voice. “If you can, try to focus on memories of Theo casting spells. Any time you could feel him using magic. Legilimency is…well, I find it distasteful. If you can help me sort through those memories, it’ll be easier on both of us.”

Draco nodded, closed his eyes, breathed in. His fists were clenched, and he forced himself to relax them.

“Alright, Draco. _Legilimens.”_

He felt the weight of another presence in his mind, and his first thoughts were of Aunt Bella, ripping cruelly through his memories, the force of her magic like a tide crashing against his mind. He could feel Lupin’s horror at the sight of her hand cupping his cheek, her face so close, crooning reassurances. He took a deep breath, and just like with meditation, he allowed the memory to play out, acknowledged it, then let it go. He summoned up the memory of Theo.

Theo, a sweet-faced little boy, staring seriously through dusty-blond lashes at Draco. Theo shrinking back from Draco’s outstretched hand. Theo flinching away; Theo freezing in an embrace, Theo hugging him for the first time, shaking slightly in Draco’s arms.

He tumbled through memories, and they were disjointed and dizzying, like he was rolling down a hill with his eyes open.

Theo levitating a feather on his first try, the ghost of a smile on his face. Theo pouring magic into a circle of runes. Theo mending a cut on Vince’s hand. Theo, the first day back from Christmas hols in fourth year, peeling off his robes and staring blankly at the floor as Pansy healed the dark purple marks that littered his back.

_Theo’s magic. Focus on Theo’s magic._

Theo crawling into bed beside Draco, casting the night sky onto the canopy, lighting up Draco’s constellation the brightest. Theo waking Draco from a nightmare and conjuring a glass of cold water, pressing it against his lips. Theo wrapping his legs around Draco’s hips, the electric crackle of his mouth against Draco’s. Theo running his tongue across Draco’s bottom lip, Theo kissing him, the shock of heat that ripped though him when Theo pressed his palm against the crotch of Draco’s flannel pajamas, the feeling of being filled up with him, something evergreen and the awareness that the chill of autumn brings, the smell of a library, a lifetime of shared body heat-

Suddenly, something jerked away from him, and he was standing in the street, eyes unfocused, cock erect. He blinked and looked up, and Lupin was staring at him, and he felt himself blushing deeply.

“Well, then,” said Lupin. “I, er…”

“Can you find him now?” Draco asked, staring through a storefront window somewhere to Lupin’s left.

“Yes, I think so,” Lupin replied.

“Right, then.”

“Right.”

He could feel Charlie’s gaze on him, curious, but he ignored it, feeling grateful that he’d thrown on his winter cloak over his muggle clothes and trying to will the erection away.

Lupin was glowing blue again, muttering to himself, and the muttering became gradually faster until there was a bright-white flash, and something seemed to crackle around him.

“Yes. Yes. That’s it. I got him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	36. Severus Snape and the Flank He Left Unguarded

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are very close, at almost 100K words, to finally finding Harry and Ron (I swear I didn't forget about them).
> 
> Also, in the next few chapters this story is going to start to earn its rating. I will make sure to post trigger warnings for sexual content for anyone who doesn't like all that stuff.

By the time Severus caught up to her, she was already duelling. The streets around the Ministry entrances were well-warded with confusion charms and notice-me-nots, but the alley she was in skirted the boundary of the wards. An elderly muggle couple passed by, clutching their shopping bags.

“Did you see that, Arlene?”

“See what?”

“Those lights!”

“Oh, come now, Marv.”

“I’m tellin’ yeh, I seen lights from over there-”

“It’s the medicine, Marv…been makin’ yer see all kinds ‘a things.”

“Heh. I reckon yer right…outta be a law against doctors givin’ folks medicine what makes ‘em see things…”

Severus tensed, but they shuffled along, muttering about the sad state of the healthcare industry and ignoring the duel that was happening in the alley behind them. He threw up another quick layer of notice-me-not charms and ran toward the flashes of light. When he skidded to a stop at the mouth of the alley, Ginny was there, with three bodies laying on the ground before her, bound tightly. Her wand was trained on him, an uncharacteristic coldness in her stance.

“Miss Weasley,” he said. “Lower your wand.”

Her wand arm didn’t drop.

“A month ago, you told me about your personal research,” she said. “What did you do to your notes to keep people from stealing them?”

He sighed. Damned Dumbledore and his wartime measures.

“I cursed them to dye the hands of the thief orange.”

She dropped her wand.

“I just sent Tonks a Patronus. This lot tried to drag me down here, but…something was…wrong.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, looking down. The man closest to Ginny was lying completely still, blood pooling around him.

“Something…I don’t know. I’ll explain later; we need to find Sirius. The charm’ll hold ‘till the Aurors get here.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” he asked. But she had already started jogging back up the alley.

Whatever physical training she did for the Harpies seemed to be working well for her; she ran at a dead sprint, bolting around the last straggling muggles heading home from their evening shopping, and with almost a foot on her height, he was hard-pressed to keep up with her. She seemed to be tearing across London with no rhyme or reason, slinging herself around corners and darting up side streets, and just as he was beginning to wonder if she even knew where she was going, she rounded an alley and crashed bodily into a huddle of black-cloaked figures.

“WEASLEY!” he barked, “Get DOWN!”

To her credit, she responded without hesitation, hitting the ground like a pile of bricks, and he threw all the force he could muster into a blasting hex. Three bodies flew back, hitting the ground several feet away. They hadn’t even managed to draw their wands.

“Damn,” Ginny said, wide-eyed. She pushed herself up, examining her scraped elbows, then walked gingerly over to the fallen figures.

“What are you- get away from there!” he ordered. This time she ignored him, pulling up the mask of the man closest to her just enough to press her fingers up under his jaw.

 _Checking for a pulse,_ he realized.

“They’re alive,” she said. _“Expecto Patronum.”_

A silver mist burst from the tip of her wand, and coalesced into the largest, shaggiest, almost bear-sized dog he had ever seen in his life.

“I need you to take Tonks another message,” she said, scratching it beneath its silvery chin. “Tell her we found more Death Eaters, and they may need medical attention. Bring her back here.”

The dog barked, a deep, booming sound, and bolted off.

 _Strange,_ he thought, staring after it. He had never heard of a patronus being able to utter any sound other than the voice of its caster.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand and tugging him. He flicked an _incarcerous_ at his unconscious quarry and let her pull him along, until she stopped before a brick wall- a dead end. But then, she tapped out a pattern against the bricks and watched them shift aside to reveal an arched doorway. She darted through, and stepped out into Diagon Alley’s industrial district.

“It’s an old doorway from back before this was an industrial park,” she said, by way of explanation. “Fred and George found out about it from Dung Fletcher; they rent space in the warehouse across the way and they let Dung sleep there sometimes.”

She gestured at a low, boxy metal structure about a football field away. He followed her gaze, and a green light flashed past the edge of his vision, and before he could stop her, she was off again.

She raced around the perimeter of the warehouse, and Severus let out a sigh of relief when she skidded to a halt, flattened herself against the wall of the building, and peered around the corner cautiously. He sidled up to her and looked over her shoulder.

The warehouse district was divided into quadrants. From their vantage point, he could see across the industrial yard to the potioneers’ quad in the northeast corner. He’d had occasion to visit several of the storage units there, and he had a general knowledge of the layout, but he’d never ventured any further into the district. The northwest quad, directly above them, was easily identifiable as the greenhouse quad by the numerous, glass-paned domes that dotted the landscape. In the center of the district was an industrial cannery and food preservation facility, and the entire quad to their right was owned by a cooperative of distilleries. The quad where they stood was, he assumed, some sort of multipurpose storage complex.

He was jarred from observation by a thunderous crack, and an outpouring of black smoke from a distillery building to their right. Ginny tensed, like an animal poising itself to spring, and Severus snatched her from midair just as she made to bolt toward it.

“Miss Weasley!” he snapped, “do try to restrain yourself. You can’t just run face first toward the first sign of danger!”

She glared up at him, but she made no move to pull herself from his grip. Finally, her expression softened a bit, and she looked back toward the source of the commotion, frowning.

“You sound just like Remus,” she grumbled.

He had nursed suspicions since eavesdropping on their midnight conversation weeks before that Lupin was preparing her for something, and now he was almost certain he was correct. But what? The Order had disbanded. The war, despite the last desperate measures of the handful of remaining Death Eaters, was over. Why was Lupin was grooming her for a fight that had already been won?

His pondering was cut short, however; there was another crash, and she tensed in his grip.

“What would Lupin say?” he asked quickly, trying to bring her back to the present, to keep her beside him long enough to work out a plan. “If Lupin were here, what would he have you do?”

She frowned at the ground, clenching her wand in her hand as though the act of thinking were physically painful.

“Every action has an opportunity cost,” she said, staring into the middle distance, repeating the phrase from rote. “I need to get over there, but running across six Quidditch pitches of open ground puts me in an indefensible position, not to mention I’d have to keep vanishing my footprints in the snow the whole way. I could apparate, but they’ve likely put wards up, and taking them down could take more time than I have…”

He blinked at her. It seemed, once someone forced her to slow down and use it, that Ginny Weasley had a brain inside her head after all.

“Test the wards,” he said. “Run a diagnostic spell. Curse-based protections can be dismantled easily with enough skill and finesse, but any sort of blood magic rules the option out; most blood wards can’t be broken except by immediate family, and some can’t be broken at all.”

He was rather surprised to see her nod compliantly and brandish her wand, and even more surprised at her array of diagnostic spells. It wasn’t as comprehensive as his own, but she knew several measures that he couldn’t identify. Whatever the hell Lupin was teaching her, as much as he hated to admit it, he was doing a rather thorough job.

He added his own layer of spellwork to the mix, feeling it catch on a series of charms. The wards were simple but deadly, designed to port anyone who crossed them into the inside of their own chest, causing them, essentially, to explode. The spellwork was a carbon copy of the late Rabastan Lestrange, and seeing it in use again made the hairs on the backs of his arm and neck prickle.

Ginny looked up at him, brow furrowed.

“It’s not curses, its… a porting charm? It just ports you back to…nowhere. The coordinates are spelled to correspond to the location of the target…”

“Yes,” he said, allowing himself a small, approving smile. “You’ve almost got it. The spell ports its target inside of their own body. It’s a rather gruesome way of killing someone.”

“Ugh. Who would even come up with that,” she said, grimacing. “I think I could unravel it, but I’d have to sit here and calculate-”

“No. There is a faster method.”

She paused, watching him expectantly, and he was quietly surprised; he was accustomed to her ignoring him outright.

“The _portus_ charm can, as you know, be altered arithmantically,” he began. “But you can also recoordinate it using the runes for space and distance. Since the ward ports its target inside their own body, simply combine the runes for space, distance and inversion of principle, and it effectively nullifies the spell by turning it inside out. Instead of porting you _inside_ yourself, it ports you _on top_ of yourself, which is where you already are, meaning it does, effectively, nothing.”

“Nice,” she breathed, punching him gently in the shoulder. “You must have been good in Runes.”

“Hardly,” he replied with a grimace. “It was actually Lucius Malfoy who figured out that trick. We had a…colleague…who was fond of using a rather similar spell, and we had occasion to circumvent it.”

She smiled wryly at him, then turned sharply, suddenly refocused.

“Right, then. I know space and distance, but I dropped runes after OWL year, so you’ll have to do the inversion rune.”

He almost pointed out that he could just as easily do the set, but she had already started etching the symbols into the ground. They were rudimentary, but effective enough, and he finished the sequence and pushed his magic into them, feeling the latent energy in the symbols catch it and draw it in.

 _“Reverti ad pristinum situm,”_ he incanted, feeling his magic draw taught across the wards. Then, there was a subtle shifting and his countercharm clicked into place.

Ginny was already holding her hand out, and even though they didn’t really need to apparate together, he slipped his hand into hers and let her side-along him, feeling sincerely grateful to whoever had taught her to silence the ‘crack’ that generally accompanied apparition.

The second they reappeared, Severus was alerted to the sound of a rather vigorous duel; the crackle of a particularly powerful spell ripped through the relative quiet, followed by a scream and the smell of something burning.

There was a large, porthole window high up on the wall of the building, and Ginny scrambled over, transfiguring a rock into a step-ladder and hastening up to peer inside. She budged over to give him room to climb, but he found that he could see in if he craned his neck a bit. The sky had darkened into night, but the distillery was well lit. There, playing out before him like a scene from a muggle cinema, was what looked to be a group of Death Eaters that was larger now than it had ever been when the Dark Lord was alive.

The warehouse was split-levelled, with inventory stored on the upper deck and distillery equipment below. Half the Death Eaters had claimed high ground; Severus could see them swarming around the upper level, slinging spells toward the floor below. Black, Granger and Thomas had retreated behind a fermenter, and Black was slinging whip-like bursts of something ink-black at any cloak of mask that ventured too close, Granger and Thomas had taken to shooting down the spells that rained from the level above. He could see blood running down Granger’s face. There was another scream; Black’s spell had hit someone dead-on, and they were rolling on the ground, clawing at their mask. A companion of the fallen caster slung back an answering cutting curse, and Black jerked away just a half-second too slowly; the spell ripped a red line across his bicep, and he grimaced from pain.

“Sirius!” Ginny cried. “We’ve got to-”

She was halted by a deafening, ground-shaking crash; the wall opposite their porthole window caved in at the corner, and the rubble was blasted aside by Luna Lovegood, who darted through the gaping hole, flinging a bludgeoning hex into the middle of the fray.

She sprinted to Black’s side, followed by Lupin and Theodore Nott. Finally, Charlie crawled through, with Draco pressed close to his side.

To Black and Lupin’s credit, they immediately began ordering their younger charges to pair up and spread out, keeping themselves moving. Among the Death Eaters, there was a clear divide between the veteran soldiers and those who must be newer recruits; the rookies tended to cluster, seeking refuge behind whatever they could find and remaining stationary, turning themselves into larger targets.

Black and Lovegood dueled side-by-side. Black fought extremely close to his opponents, apparating almost on top of them, and flicking binding spells and cutting curses at such a close range and with such power behind them that they tore through their opponents’ shields effortlessly, and the sight of sweet, dreamy little Luna Lovegood mimicking such an aggressive combat style was almost comical.

Their combined offense was clearly effective, but it left them totally unguarded, as though Black had learned to duel by throwing his entire body and the whole force of his magic at one opponent, either unable to or unconcerned with protecting his back from a secondary assault. It would have been a suicidally foolish strategy for combat in such a large group, except that Lupin had taken up a defensive position, shooting down the curses that flew at their unguarded back and sides while flicking aside his own assailants.

Foolish. They were relying completely on Lupin to protect them. Fools.

Nott had fallen in beside Draco and Charlie, and the two boys were slinging hexes and shielding while Charlie incarcerated three masks in quick succession.

In the few seconds it took him to observe the scene before him, Ginny had followed her friend’s lead, and blown a massive hole in the wall, forfeiting any advantage that stealth might have afforded them.

“You couldn’t have just vanished the window?” he snapped.

“Whoops,” she said, shrugging once, then darting into the fray.

He following her through the gap, assuming she would run straight to her mentor, but to his surprise, she stuck close to his side, shielding him unnecessarily. Lupin had taken up position on the opposite side of the building, alternating between covering Black and Lovegood and dueling one-on-one with a mask that he had cornered behind a massive, brass fermenter. Ginny caught his eye; he angled his chin up sharply in her direction, and she nodded, fanning out toward the opposite corner.

Ginny took over the task of shielding Black and Lovegood, who had reduced the pack of Death Eaters that had tried to overwhelm them to a pile on the ground, stunned or possibly dead, and they were dueling the final two masks one-on-one. Meanwhile, Lupin had gathered a bright-white energy around him, and was discharging it into the group firing from above, immobilizing them in white light. Granger and Thomas were dueling back-to-back, narrowly maintaining an advantage against their two opponents, and both Draco and Theo Nott had flocked to Charlie’s side, following his muttered directions as they surged forward to suppress a cell that had retreated up the stairs to higher ground.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the shimmer of a poorly cast disillusionment, and he stepped out from behind Ginny’s shield, slinging a cutting curse in a smooth, rapid arc. The spell flickered, and a mask appeared before him, whipping out a curse that passed just close enough for him to feel it pulse with a dark-purple, oily energy.

_Anton?_

It was a curse that drained the psychic energy of its victim, killing them slowly while transferring their energy to the spell’s caster, and it was of Antonin Dolohov’s own creation.

He fired back and the mask flicked the spell aside easily. He slung out a series of curses and hexes in quick succession, pushing, testing for weaknesses or inconsistencies in defense.

And then, the man before him let out a deep, throaty laugh. Anton’s laugh. But…?

“Wise Severus,” Anton rumbled. “Always so cautious.”

He surged forward, throwing his whole body into a hex that Severus barely had a split-second to shield against, and Severus knew Anton’s style, had seen the man duel a thousand times. Next, he would push in hard, trying to crowd his way into Severus’ space, put him on the defensive. Severus was ready, blasting away curse after curse and pushing back, firing slicing hexes in a complicated pattern, trying to throw his guard, and finally, he flicked his wand, feinting a hex at Anton’s face and pulling it at the last instant to wrap a Firebrand Whip around the man’s casting arm. Anton screamed, his arm wrapped in burning rope, and Severus jerked him off balance just as he managed to sever the restraint. He stumbled, and only just managed to throw up a shield in time to deflect the Fever-Dream hex Severus blasted at him. Beside him, he saw Ginny leap aside to avoid a killing curse, and for a split second, Black’s back was exposed, unguarded, and there was a jet of green light barreling straight at him, and Severus raised his wand but it was too late, he wouldn’t make it, and just as he was sure that Black would die, a pillar of stone burst up from the ground, exploding under the force of the curse, and Lupin was there, fighting back-to-back with him. And in that moment of hesitation, Anton had thrown his own cutting curse, and he was jerked back to the duel in front of him by the lance of pain; he had leapt aside a second too late, and the curse sliced across his wand arm. He jerked his wand up, the pain sharpening his focus, and tossed a flame lance, followed quickly enough by a cutting curse that Anton couldn’t deflect them both. The cutting curse landed directly across his chest, rending his flesh with an audible, wet rip. Anton staggered back and disapparated just as Severus’ killing curse struck the ground where he had stood. His head was reeling with the impossibility of Anton alive, but the man had Anton’s voice, and his laugh, and his spells...who else could it be?

He glanced over at Ginny, who had crushed her assailant beneath a pile of heavy stones and stepped over his corpse, stone-faced, to finally join her friends and mentor.

Granger and Thomas had beaten their opponents back, binding one and forcing the other to disapparate; they had taken cover behind a distiller, and Thomas was leaning heavily against her, coughing desperately.

He sprinted over to them, a suspicion turning sour in his gut.

“Lay him down,” he ordered, and Granger complied immediately, her brown eyes looking up at him in concern. Thomas gasped on the ground, and his suspicion was confirmed. He knew the spell; it was one of Macnair’s, meant to shut down the function of the lungs slowly, so he could watch the victim suffocate. Thomas must have been hit some time ago, and had been dueling in this state the whole while.

He knew how to reverse the spell, but the magic was complicated and sensitive, and would require his full concentration; it would require him to leave himself defenseless in the heat of an active duel. He looked over his shoulder at Ginny Weasley, her back pressed against Lovegood’s, guarding her with a cold viciousness, and in that moment, he made a decision.

“Miss Granger,” he said. “I can reverse the spell, but it will require my full concentration-”

“Don’t worry, professor,” she said, wand up and eyes narrowed at the dueling field. “I’ve got you covered.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he murmured, and turned his back to the chaos around him, muttering an incantation from memory and trying to pull out the soiled energy that had tangled itself with Thomas’ hearth-warm magic, refusing to so much as flinch at the sound of Granger knocking spells from the air around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	37. Draco Malfoy and the Rescue Mission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So i'm on lockdown, working at home due to the pandemic, and all of this social distancing is making me write fanfic. Stuff is about to start happening really fast, so uhm...yay?
> 
> Trigger warnings: mild violence

Lupin held his wand aloft, and blue light coalesced around him, burning whiter and brighter until it disappeared in a sudden flash.

“Yes. Yes. That’s it. I got him,” he said. “It looks like…oh, the industrial district! It’s almost deserted this time of year, and full of empty warehouses and storage units…perfect place to hide a body…”

“What do you mean a _body?”_ Draco cried.

Lupin looked up at him, surprised.

“Oh, well I only meant…that is, I’m sure-”

“Let’s go,” Charlie snapped, stepping in front of Draco again. “If we hurry up, there won’t be any bodies.”

“Right,” said Lupin. “Let’s meet at the Crossroad, and cut through Knockturn Alley. We probably won’t be able to apparate in, so be prepared to disillusion yourselves.”

He disapparated, followed closely by Lovegood, and left Charlie glaring at the spot where he stood.

“Charlie,” Draco said hesitantly. “What’s…”

Charlie looked at him impatiently.

“What’s the matter between you and Lupin? You seem…cross.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d noticed Charlie shooting a dark look at Lupin, but before, he hadn’t really cared enough to question it.

Charlie sighed.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit strange, the way he’s always ordering my sister around?”

Draco blinked at him.

“I’d…never really noticed, honestly,” he said truthfully, cringing at his latest display of obliviousness.

“And it’s just…Ginny doesn’t listen to _anyone,_ except maybe Fred and George, and only then when she feels like it. But she…I mean, did you hear how she asked him _permission…”_

“Well he was our teacher, you know, and they did fight in the war together,” Draco offered.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” Charlie growled. “Lupin and Black are running around out here playing amateur Aurors, and maybe that’s fine for them. They’re two-war veterans; I’m sure they can handle themselves. But my sister is a _Quidditch star._ She’s not…they’re putting her in _danger.”_

“Charlie, I…don’t think they’re forcing her to…play Auror, or whatever. I hardly think Ginny would listen to them if they tried to make her stay behind.”

“Well…I mean you’re right, but…I just think she spends a lot of time around him.”

“You spend a lot of time around Severus,” Draco replied, “and there’s nothing strange about that.”

Charlie blushed a solid red, and Draco’s earlier observations suddenly solidified into understanding…the way he had smiled at Severus, the way he kept asking him to dinner, the way he had sat up with Draco by Severus’ bedside the night he was injured…

_Oh._

“That’s different!” barked Charlie. “Severus is…and anyway, this is hardly the time to be talking about…”

Draco shot him a questioning look, but Charlie wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Right, then,” he said. “Meet you at the Crossroad.”

And with that, he disappeared, still blushing, and Draco followed behind him.

The Crossroad was exactly what it sounded like; it was the road where Diagon and Knockturn intersected, and it served as a common apparition point for those who wanted to reach the seedy side of town without parading through Diagon Alley to get there. Draco reappeared nearly on top of Charlie, and found that Lupin was holding his wand aloft again, summoning the beam of white light.

“Oh, dear…I’d hoped to avoid that,” said Lupin under his breath.

“What is it?” Draco asked, alarmed.

“Sirius. I can feel his magic. He’s in a rather nasty duel at the moment.”

Lovegood narrowed her eyes at him, then raised her wand.

A silvery ram burst from its tip, and a moment later, it darkened from silver to gray and brown and solidified, lowering its head and butting her gently. He knew that animal; it had been there the night of the werewolf attack, but…

“Lovegood…is that a Patronus?”

She looked up at him, as though she hadn’t realized he was there before.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “At least, I think so.”

He resisted the impulse to cock his head.

_She…thinks so…_

“Ram,” she said, looking down at it. “Go find Sirius and the others, and come back to me, OK?”

It raised its head proudly and sprang away, turning silver and incorporeal before bounding off.

Lupin’s white light was blazing again.

“I’ll be able to follow this straight to our Mr. Nott. I have to thank you, Draco. Without your help, I doubt that my memory of Theodore’s magic would have been sufficient.”

Draco froze, wondering if Lupin would out him, but then, he supposed it hardly mattered; Lovegood didn’t seem like the type to care, and Charlie already knew. And to Lupin’s credit, he said nothing; his comment seemed to be nothing more than a genuine thanks.

“Alright,” he said. “We can cut through Knockturn to the industrial corridor.”

He reached out and grabbed Luna’s hand, then disillusioned himself with a quick flick of his wand. Luna reached out and wiggled her fingers at Draco, and he took her hand with a raised eyebrow-surely Lupin didn’t mean for them to hold hands like a bunch of nursery schoolers crossing a street-but he quickly realized the necessity as Lovegood vanished before his eyes. It was a bit disorienting holding her hand, feeling it firm beneath his fingers yet seeing nothing but open space in the place where she ought to be standing.

“Would you like me to do your charm?” Lupin asked, his disembodied voice mild and polite.

“I’ve got it covered,” Charlie grumbled, taking Draco’s hand and casting his own disillusionment on both of them. He’d done the spell on himself before, but it was nothing like having someone else’s magic sliding down your body, and Charlie’s poured down him like wet, warm August rain.

They’d learned in school, from the man that had not been Mad-Eye Moody, that the disillusionment spell was imperfect, and even the most adept caster could not make himself truly invisible, but between Charlie’s magic and Lupin’s, they were probably as close as it was possible to be. He had to squint to pick up the shimmer of the spell, even knowing that his companions were directly beside him.

They walked in a silent, hurried line, and it really did feel like he was back in nursery school, holding hands as though they were making their way down the Alley to Fortescue’s for a waffle cone or an ice cream sundae, and he had a mad urge to laugh.

Finally, they reached the narrow, cobbled road between Knockturn and the industrial park, and without warning, he crashed into the back of Lovegood, who had crashed into the back of Lupin, and seconds later, Charlie crashed into his back as well.

“What the hell?” he whispered in the direction of where he thought Lovegood’s ear should be.

“Sorry,” he heard Lupin mutter, “but there are wards up. I’ll need to run a diagnostic charm.”

They waited, and Draco succumbed to the childish impulse to squeeze Charlie’s hand, and Charlie squeezed back, and finally, Lupin’s disembodied voice floated back to them.

“Apparition is out,” he said. “There’s a ward, and I don’t have time to try to make sense of it. There’s also a proximity-based dispelling charm; as soon as we cross the threshold, the disillusionment will fall. I don’t know how far back the active radius is, and I don’t have time to calculate it. _Hominem revelio_ is showing a large cluster of activity in the distillery and in the greenhouse quad; I’m not sure what they’re doing in the distillery, but the magical signatures coming from the greenhouse quad are showing definite signs of ritual magic.”

“Should we split up?” Luna asked.

“No,” Lupin replied. “Theodore’s being held in a greenhouse; I can feel his magic. I just want us to be prepared; we’re going to have to cover a lot of open ground, and ritual magic is…well, we need to be prepared for anything.”

“Alright, then,” Luna said. She dropped Draco’s hand, and Draco let go of Charlie’s, and they all surged forward at once, stepping on the back of each other’s heels until they crossed the boundary of the wards and the disillusionments were washed away.

It was almost anticlimactic, Draco thought, as they scurried cautiously across the length of the district toward the greenhouses, sticking close to the shadowy sides of the warehouse buildings, and minimizing the time they spent under the open sky. Maybe it was the cover of night, or maybe no one expected a rescue, but they crossed the district completely unnoticed. It struck him as strange, and he said as much to Charlie, whispering in hushed tones as they jogged along.

“It is a bit suspicious,” Charlie said. “But I don’t think it’s a trap.”

“How do you know?” Draco asked.

“Even basic caterwauling charms are a bit complicated,” Charlie replied. “Wards take time to set up. All we ran into was an anti-apparition ward and a dispelling charm. Not to mention the location; I guess there are a lot of unused warehouse spaces here that are large and empty enough for ritual magic, but it’s practically on top of Diagon Alley. This feels like a rush job to me. Someone got opportunistic and this was the best they could come up with on short notice.”

“I think,” Charlie began again, “that whoever took your buddy was counting on the Aurory being overwhelmed, and...he lives alone, right? I reckon they figured he would have no one to come look for him.”

Draco winced, his imagination conjuring images of Theo bleeding out into a cauldron, some faceless wizard chanting over his blood, the look of resignation on Theo’s face as he realized no one was coming for him, and Draco’s sickness must have shown on his face because Charlie stopped for a moment, and cupped Draco’s cheek briefly.

“Hey,” he said, tugging Draco into a tight hug. “That’s not how it’s gonna happen, OK. We’re gonna find him. I promise.”

Draco nodded, not bothering to wipe his eyes, and they took off again, sprinting to catch up with Lovegood and Lupin.

Finally, they reached the last of the low, long, boxy storage buildings, and Lupin stopped, pressing himself into the shadows along the wall, and they all followed suit. Before them was a row of three dome-shaped greenhouses, spaced evenly apart, and surrounding the dome furthest from them was a small squad of about ten masked Death Eaters.

“See those masks there on guard duty?” Lupin asked unnecessarily. “That’ll be our spot.”

He killed the white light from his wand, just as a flicker of silver coalesced into solidness before them.

“Ram!” Luna whispered. “Show me.”

She reached out and stroked the side of the animal’s face, and it butted against her hand, and something silver snaked up her arm.

“Sirius has ‘Mione and Dean. They went to the distillery; they’re going to have to duel their way out. Ginny and Severus aren’t with them.”

“Shit,” Charlie muttered.

“Ginny’s alright,” Lupin said. “She’s dueling now too, but she’s faring well, and I assume Severus can look after himself.”

“How do you-”

“It’s the tracking spell,” Lupin cut him off sharply, his irritation at Charlie’s surliness finally beginning to show. “I can find Ginny quite easily, and even from a distance I can identify her magic. Right now, her magic is aggressive, but not desperate or injured. Luna, call Ram back, please. He’s getting impatient.”

Sure enough, the ram was pawing the ground, head lowered in the direction of the sentries posted around the greenhouse as though it meant to charge them at any moment. Luna held out her wand.

“Come home please, Ram,” she said, and it flickered into silver again and disappeared into the tip of her wand.

Draco had always been desperately curious about the Patronus charm, though he had never managed to cast one. He’d seen the kids in Potter’s little Defense club conjuring them in the halls between classes all of sixth year, and he’d seen Severus conjure one once, but he’d never heard of a Patronus that could become solid, living flesh like Lovegood’s ram, and he resolved to ask her about it later, when they were home.

He could see spell-lights flashing against the greenhouse windows, and a fear rose up in him again as he imagined Theo being tortured, bleeding into some ritual, alone.

“We’ll have to take care of that lot,” Lupin said. “And it would be best to do it without them raising an alarm.”

“How are we supposed to stun that many people without them noticing?” Draco hissed incredulously.

“We’re not going to stun them,” Lupin said, smiling mildly as though he were pointing out an error on Draco’s parchment.

He went very still, and the air around him seemed to crackle with restless energy, and suddenly there was a power so heavy that Draco could barely hold himself up beneath it, and Lupin gathered it around him. Across the open ground, Draco saw a ripple run soundlessly along the Earth, and he watched as the Earth opened beneath each of the masks in tandem, and a swath of crawling vines burst up wildly, encasing them until they’d vanished completely inside the green. When the vines receded, the bodies fell to the ground in synchrony.

He looked up at Lupin, at the man who had used to mark their papers in green ink, because red was too harsh, and a cold chill ran through him. Lupin stared blankly ahead, but Draco didn’t miss Lovegood reaching out and grabbing one of his shaking hands in her own.

“Are they dead?” he asked.

“No,” Lupin said. “But there’s no need to bind them; they won’t be getting up any time soon.”

“Ram,” Luna said, and her patronus swirled into being before her. “Could you go find Neville or Tonks and tell them to bring a Healer here?”

The ram lowered its head, as if nodding in acknowledgement, then went charging off into the night.

When they reached the dome, there was a fairly dense foliage pressed up against the glass windows, but he could just make out a limp, brown-haired figure laying in the center of a circle of stones.

 _“It’s Theo,”_ he hissed. “What are they doing to him?”

“I can’t tell from here,” Lupin replied, “but let’s not wait to find out.”

With that, he vanished a pane of glass, and they slipped single file into the dense bushes that had grown up against the glass. Peering through the leaves, the stone circle was clearly visible; a series of nine runes had been etched into the Earth inside the ring of stone, and beside each symbol was a Death Eater, each cutting across their palms in turn and spilling blood onto their symbols. And in the center of the circle was Theo’s body.

“Charlie,” he whispered frantically. “That’s Theo!”

And just as Charlie drew his wand and made to leap out from cover, a hand shot out from behind them and dragged him back down, and Draco turned around to find-

“Theo?” he whispered, looking at the boy, then at the body in the circle, then back again. “Where did you…how…?”

“They were trying to send me somewhere,” Theo whispered. “But I didn’t want to go. I switched myself for some rocks I transfigured... What are you doing here?”

“Rescuing _you!_ What do you think we’re doing, _stopping by for tea?”_ Draco hissed.

“You came to…rescue me? But how did you find me?” he asked with a sort of conversational curiosity.

“I’ll tell you later, Theo. We’ve got to get out of here.”

He looked over at Charlie, then at Lupin and Lovegood. Lupin pointed at a door along the back wall of the building, and Charlie nodded, and with that, they began a slow and silent crawl through the foliage. Behind them, he could hear chanting. He crawled faster. They made it through the door, one by one, and crept through some sort of nursery, walking in single file, avoiding the shelves lined with shoots and buds along the walls. The sprouting greenery seemed to reach for them malevolently, the stretching tendrils and undulating vines appearing almost sinister in the low, greenish light, and Draco held his breath until they made it out the back door.

They rounded the building and found a single witch, scrambling frantically between her fallen counterparts. She had pulled her mask up, and Draco could see her face, rather young looking, with well-bred, aristocratic features, but no one Draco knew. She caught sight of them and jerked the mask back down, sending up a burst of red sparks that exploded loudly in the sky, and that action cost her any chance to defend herself; Lovegood disarmed her and Lupin incarcerated her in one smooth motion.

Their cover was blown, however; within seconds, the glass windows shattered, and the masks were on them.

“Draco, I need you to stick close to your buddy,” Charlie said, nodding at Theo, who was exchanging stunners with a black-cloaked witch wearing a plague-doctor’s mask. “He seems like he can hold his own, but he’s a civilian…keep an eye on him.”

“Right,” Draco said. Draco was no longer too proud to admit that Theo could beat him solidly in a duel and probably did not need to be looked after. But Theo’s magic could be unpredictable at times, exploding when he was in pain or afraid, and he had accidentally hurt himself more than once when his spells went out of control. Draco had shielded Theo to keep his magic _in_ more often than he’d used it to protect him. Then again, they were hardly children anymore. Theo was a veteran; not that he’d been acknowledged for it with the Mark on his arm, but he had saved lives by switching sides at the Battle of Hogwarts.

The confrontation was over rather quickly; Longbottom showed up, along with what looked like half of Gryffindor house. He recognized Seamus Finnegan, the loud Irish boy that had set fireworks loose in the castle all of seventh year; Lavender Brown, whose face and throat was so heavily scarred he almost didn’t recognize her, a girl he remembered from Gryffindor’s Quidditch team, and a boy who looked barely of age that he thought might have been in the same year as Astoria Greengrass.

At the sight of the Aurory, the masks began disapparating, leaving their fallen counterparts behind.

“Are they dead?” asked Longbottom.

“No,” Lupin replied. “They’ll all be suffering from magical exhaustion. Get them to Mungo’s. They’ll live.”

Longbottom looked like he wanted to press the issue, but Lupin had already started to sprint off.

The industrial park was rather too large to be running across it, and as soon as they were out of earshot of the Aurors, Lupin slowed.

“There’s a problem at the distillery,” he said. “Sirius…his magic is getting…darker.”

“Oh, I was there before,” Theo said. “They had a great row about whether to kill me or not, but they ended up deciding on ritual sacrifice.”

“Did you see who took you?” Draco asked.

“Death Eaters,” Theo replied. “I don’t know who. They’re all wearing masks.”

“How many,” Charlie asked.

“I’m not sure…they’d covered my eyes.”

“Alright, then,” Lupin said. “Luna, we need to get there, now.”

“I’m coming too,” Charlie said. “I still don’t know where my sister is, but I’d bet my magic if there’s a fight she’ll end up right in the middle of it.”

“Alright, then,” Lupin said mildly. “I won’t try to stop you, but be careful. Something about this feels…strange.”

“You’re telling me,” Charlie grumbled as Lupin and Lovegood disappeared.

Draco looked over at Theo.

“Theo, I’m glad you’re alright, but-”

“Don’t bother telling me to leave without you,” Theo said flatly. “I won’t.”

“Theo, don’t-”

“I said I won’t leave you,” he cried, and the fierceness that flashed across his face was so twisted up with love and anger that Draco could only blink at him in shock.

“I’m going,” he said, his stone face snapping back in place.

“We don’t have time to argue,” Charlie said. “Theo. You’re a good friend to Draco. I’m glad he has you. The two of you can watch out for each other, OK?”

Theo nodded seriously, and Charlie apparated away, and Draco’s gut twisted miserably with worry.

“Theo…you used to run away from lightning bugs,” Draco grumbled, glaring at the boy. “You slept in my bed every night for seven years because you were afraid of the fucking dark…what a time to decide to turn into a bloody fucking Gryffindor…”

He apparated, and he felt Theo land beside him as his feet touched the ground. His hand shot out to steady him, more out of habit than necessity.

“I’m still afraid of the dark,” Theo said, offering him a rare, wry smile. Then, without warning, he caught sight of Lupin and darted off, leaving Draco to chase behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	38. Draco Malfoy and the Portal To Another Dimension

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part two of shit hitting the fan.
> 
> Trigger warning for mild violence.

It was the first time since the Inferi fuckup that Draco had dueled beside Charlie, and he could tell that his mentor was holding back his magic.

“Aim to incapacitate, if you can,” he told them, sending a stunning spell through the shield that Draco had just thrown up. “We don’t know how many of these masks are really Death Eaters.”

Lovegood had, in a surprising display of power, blasted a hole neatly through the stone wall and darted into the fray after Black without another word. Moments later, he saw Ginny emerge from her own cloud of destruction.

Charlie caught sight of her, and made to head toward her, but Draco grabbed his arm.

“Don’t,” he told Charlie. “She’s not going to listen to you if you try to send her away, and Severus will look after her anyway.”

“Right,” Charlie said, sighing.

“This argument sounds almost familiar,” Theo quipped.

“Oh, hush,” Draco grumbled back, blasting at a mask whose shield had just been shattered.

The sight of Lovegood fighting was strange; she seemed to throw herself at her opponents with no intention of shielding herself, and all that was stopping her from being hexed in the back was Lupin, who was alternating between dueling and knocking down the spells that were thrown at her. A moment later, he saw Lupin catch Ginny’s eye, and the two of them began to work in tandem, fighting their own opponents while shielding their friends.

It seemed a bit mad, honestly, but Black and Lovegood together were tearing down masks ruthlessly, and Draco began to wonder if they were even leaving them alive.

He didn’t have long to ponder the thought, however; it seemed that they had underestimated the Death Eaters’ numbers. The whole upper floor was overrun, and they were making good use of the high ground, throwing down spells then darting back out of firing range.

“We’ve got to get up there,” Charlie said. "I need the two of you to get behind me in single file and keep a shield up. We’re going to be vulnerable running up the stairs, so I’m going to force them to scatter. The second we get to the top step, try to get some distance from me, and keep shielding.”

The way Charlie’s magic crackled in the air around him felt safe, and Draco resisted the instinct to press close to his back.

_This is it, Draco. You wanted this, now you’re getting it._

“Alright, now stay behind me until I say,” Charlie said. “We’re going to have to haul arse. Do exactly as I tell you, and we’ll be fine.”

 _Do just what I tell you, and we’ll get out of this,_ his mind echoed, summoning the memory of Inferi swarming around them, and Charlie’s infuriating calm. He’d left him…but never again. He closed his fist around his wand and steeled himself.

 _“Partum Ignis Draco,”_ Charlie snarled, and from his wand burst a great, blazing dragon. It soared up the steps, and they sprinted after it in single file, watching it swoop down on the cluster of masks, belching fire. The masks scattered, and the dragon winked out of existence.

“Now split!” Charlie barked. “Shields up, move!”

Draco complied, flinging himself left as Theo went right, whipping his shield up in front of him just in time to block a cutting curse.

He surveyed the trio of masks in front of him; they seemed almost afraid, huddled together slinging hexes in a gaggle, and Draco wondered how they had ended up here. He tossed a few stunners, but couldn't quite land one.

_Alright. Got to break them up if I’m going to subdue them._

“ _Serpensortia,”_ he shouted, recalling his second-year dueling lesson, and as he predicted, the three of them reeled back as a viper sprang from his wand and flew toward them.

The closest, a witch, he hit with a stunner while she was off-balance; she hit the ground, and her partner tripped bodily over her, helpless to block a second stunner. The third of the trio showed a bit more mettle, standing his ground and banishing the snake from behind his shield. He surged forward, and, just like he was sparring with Charlie in the meadow, Draco let him move into striking range, then stepped into the man’s charge, wrapped a hand around the back of his head, and tossed him over his hip, dropping his shield and stunning him in one fell swoop.

Feeling rather pleased with himself, he turned to see how Theo was faring and almost laughed out loud at the sight before him; Theo had transfigured both of his opponents into a pair of flobberworms, and was stepping over them to duel a third.

His mirth died quickly, however; a second later, another mask flew at him viciously, throwing rapidfire hexes that shattered his shield like glass and sent him leaping to the side. Draco took cover behind a shelf of bottled spirits, watching the man’s distorted shape through the clear liquid. He whipped around the side of the shelf and threw a petrification jinx, and the wizard knocked it away easily, firing back something that reeked of decay. It hit the floor beside Draco, and the floorboards crumbled to dust, and the man laughed, deep and throaty, at Draco’s wide-eyed alarm.

“Come on then,” he said in a thick, Eastern-European accent. “You want to play? We will play together. Show me your magic.”

But before Draco could react, Charlie was there, power crackling wildly like an animal pulling at the end of its chain, his face twisted into a mask of rage.

“Bellanova,” Charlie growled, deep and cold and unrecognizable. “Get back Draco. Bellanova, you’re going to die!”

The man laughed again, throwing his head back and howling with it as Charlie threw his whole body at him, snarling like a wild dog.

Draco stumbled back, running into Theo. He could hear footsteps running up the stairs, and he whipped around, wand up, but it was only Ginny.

“My old friend,” the man cackled. “I knew you would come for me. I just knew.”

A white light gathered around Charlie, and an energy so heavy and oppressive that it drove Draco to his knees. His wand vanished, and in its place the light stretched into the shape of a heavy broadsword, and Charlie charged at him, reflecting the man’s foul magic off the sword’s glowing blade. And just as Charlie reached him, he pulled his mask back, his pockmarked face grinning toothily, and whispered:

“Goodbye, friend.”

The blade fell on empty air; the man had disapparated.

Peals of white light sparked around Charlie, ripping through the air, and Draco felt the ground beneath him groan and shake. Charlie's fist clenched, and a crack shot up the length of the wall beside them.

“Charlie!” Draco cried. “What are you doing? Stop!”

The crack began to split, and he felt the floor shift beneath him.

“Stop!” he cried again. He staggered to his feet, and walked shakily toward Charlie, struggling to stay upright under the weight of the magic. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ginny stumbling toward them.

“Charlie. Please.”

He stretched his hand out, and finally, as if waking from a dream, Charlie looked up at him. The sword flickered and disappeared, and his wand reformed in his hand. Charlie reached out, took Draco’s hand, and just held it for a moment.

“Sorry,” he said finally, his voice tired. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Draco replied.

“Draco. Bellanova…You have to get everyone out of here, Draco.”

“He was…the one who got away,” Draco said.

“Yeah. I have to go after him. I need you…don’t argue, Draco. I need you to get everyone away from here. You’re all in danger. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“Who the fuck was that?” Ginny demanded, marching over and glaring up at him.

“It doesn’t matter. Ginny, go home. Take your friends and go home, right the fuck now.”

“No, Charlie-”

“Ginny, I _need you to fucking listen to me,”_ he snapped. “Please. Don’t fight me. Just go home. This is important.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Is it more important than Harry and Ron?” she asked with a saccharine sort of calm. “Because I know where our brother is now, but if you’d rather-”

“No!” he said, looking pained. “Wait…I’m sorry. Tell me. Tell me where Ron is.”

“You saw the ritual circle where they had Theo, right?” she asked. “Well, there are runes etched into each of those rocks, and the rune sequence is the same as the sequence in Sway. The nine people that were there? They were there to open the portal and keep it anchored to this plane. Remus had a hunch, and while you were busy trying to bring the whole building down with whatever the fuck that tantrum was, he and Hermione were figuring out how to get the boys back.”

“Tell me what I need to do,” he said gently.

“We’re going. Right now. The Aurory’s tied up with processing the masks we captured. We have to go now while they’re too busy to interfere. I’ve called Fred and George. They’re coming to help us hold the portal open, and we’re going through it. Come or don’t,” she said. “But I’m going to get my family back.”

And with that, she disapparated.

“Well, you heard her,” Draco said. “We’ve got to go find your brother and Potter.”

“Alright,” Charlie said, smiling in resignation. “I’ll see you there.”

Draco squeezed his hand once, then let it go, and he disapparated.

He looked up at Theo. There were little creases at the corners of Theo’s mouth, which meant he was either worried or angry, or maybe both.

“Do you know where that portal goes, Draco?” Theo asked.

“No,” he replied.

“Do you know if you’ll even find Potter and Weasley there?”

“No.”

“Do you know for certain that you’ll be able to get back?”

“No. I don’t know. I don’t know anything, OK?”

“Draco. Don’t go through that portal.”

“I have to.”

“This isn’t like you, Draco. For all you know, it will port you straight to the bottom of the ocean and you’ll drown. Don’t go.”

“I have to, Theo. I’m sorry.”

Theo stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Draco and buried his face in his neck, and Draco’s arms came up and around his back reflexively.

“Draco, whatever it is you’re trying to prove, you don’t have to do it.”

“I’m trying to change, Theo.”

“Trying to change doesn’t mean porting yourself to another dimension,” Theo whispered, a note of pleading in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” Draco said, pulling away from him. “But if I can’t do this now, I’ll never be able to.”

He stepped back and disapparated, feeling as though he had failed Theo, somehow.

 _It’s nothing you haven’t done before,_ he reminded himself cruelly.

His head swam in the memory; the night of the battle, Theo standing in the doorway of the Great Hall and asking him to stay and fight, to turn his back on the Dark Lord and defend the castle that had been their home.

Theo, Daphne, Astoria…they’d stayed fully expecting the castle to fall, fully expecting the Dark Lord to claim victory and return to punish them for their betrayal, and they’d chosen to face death rather than spend their lives in submission.

And Theo had been so scared, his eyes wide, hands shaking. He was brave, but he was also selfish. He didn’t want to die alone. But Draco hadn’t stayed. Draco had gone off chasing Potter and gotten Vince killed in the process while Theo fought without him.

 _You can’t go back,_ he told himself for the billionth time. _You can’t go back and change it._ _You did the best you could with the person you were at the time._

He jogged toward the shattered dome, and he could see the heads of red hair even from across the lawn.

_If you don’t do this now, you’ll never be able to._

“Charlie,” he cried, climbing through a shattered window. “Wait for me!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys... visit me on Tumblr...with all this social distancing, I need human interaction ;) 
> 
> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	39. Charlie Weasley and the Last Time He Would Crawl to Her

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh. Charlie. I love him so much. 
> 
> Trigger warnings for graphic descriptions of violence.

When he climbed through the shattered glass and stepped into the dome, the twins were already there, along with Percy, who was still in his pajamas, bickering viciously with Ginny.

“You can’t possibly be planning on going through that, Ginevra, you don’t even know where it goes!”

“I don’t care, Percy. If I don’t go, who will?”

“Someone else! Me! I’ll go!”

“No.”

“Ginny!”

“Nope.”

Beside them, Hermione was arranging Fred and George around the runes, dutifully ignoring the row while she demonstrated the incantation and wand movement to activate the spell.

“I’m going,” he heard Sirius tell Luna. “I need you to stay here.”

“Sirius!”

“I’m not trying to protect you, Luna. I trust you. I want you with me. But we need to-”

“Split Healers between groups,” Luna sighed. “I know.”

“Come on then, Luna. Dean and I are staying too,” said Hermione bracingly. “We’ve got to keep the portal open, or Sirius won’t be able to get back. Come over here by me.”

Luna’s pretty face was mottled red, as though she were trying not to cry, but she complied, standing between George and Hermione unhappily.

“Luna, it’s Sirius. He’ll be alright,” he heard George whisper.

Sirius took his place in the middle of the circle beside Ginny, who was ignoring Percy, who had switched from trying to reason with her to outright pleading.

“It’s alright, Perce,” Charlie said, walking up to his little brother and cupping his cheek. “I’m going too.”

He saw Percy visibly relax, and he wrapped him up in a tight hug and squeezed, and Percy let out a deep breath and squeezed him back.

“We don’t even know where that portal goes,” he muttered into Charlie’s shoulder.

“I know. But we’ll be fine. Just hold it open for us so we can get back, OK?”

“I will,” he said. “I promise.”

“Billy!” Fred shouted suddenly. “Fleur!”

He saw Billy sprinting across the dome toward them, his red ponytail bobbing next to Fleur’s blonde one.

“What the _hell_ is going on?” he barked, eyes flashing in a rare display of temper. “If this is some kind of prank, I swear-”

“Not a prank, Bill,” George cut in impatiently. “We think we know where Ron and Harry are, and we’re going to try to go find them. Get in the circle. Fleur, would you mind coming and standing by this rune? We have to hold the circle open for them…”

Something about the sight of Billy was reassuring, and the knot in his belly eased a bit as he moved into the center of the circle.

“Charlie!”

He looked up, and saw Draco climbing through the window that they had vanished a few hours earlier.

“Wait for me!”

He scrambled into the circle and pressed himself into Charlie’s side, and Charlie had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. Maybe he’d been a little to hard on the boy after the Inferi thing…he seemed determined to make up for it by refusing to allow Charlie out of his sight ever again.

“Mister Weasley,” he heard Severus say, and he saw four other heads pop up in unison, but Severus was looking at Bill. “I’m afraid I need to take your place. It seems that my godson has decided to join his mentor, and I must accompany him. Perhaps you could stay with your lovely wife, Mrs…?”

“Fleur Weasley,” he heard her say, in her throaty accent. “A pleasure to meet you.”

“Severus Snape, at your service,” Severus replied silkily, bowing.

Billy looked torn between staying beside Fleur and staying beside Charlie and Ginny, but Ginny rolled her eyes impatiently and gave him a little shove.

“Go on, Bill.”

“Alright,” he said uncertainly, shooting Charlie a worried look. He smiled back gently, and Bill relaxed a bit.

They crowded into the center of the circle, and he could hear Hermione chanting the incantation to open the portal, followed by Luna, then George, then Fred, Percy, Dean, Remus, Billy, Fleur…the ground shook beneath their feet, and a sickly yellow light flickered around them, then suddenly Charlie felt his body falling and falling until he tumbled and hit the ground.

He jumped to his feet, looking around to find Severus and Ginny already up and dusting themselves off. In the ground beside him was a hole, glowing yellow, and he stared in fascination as it spit out Draco, then Sirius.

They were in the Forbidden Forest; and though daylight had only barely begun to peek over the horizon when they had left, here the sun was high and bright in the sky. Charlie could see the place where Hagrid’s hut ought to be, and the vast stretch of emptiness that should have been home to Hogwarts castle. He shivered at the sight of the open sky, empty of the castle’s stretching spires. Something about this place felt wrong.

“Are we…” Ginny began.

“The Forbidden Forest,” he offered. “But…”

“The castle’s not there,” she finished, edging closer to him.

“How are we supposed to find the boys?” she asked, looking up at him. “I could send sparks up, or-”

“No!” Sirius cut her off sharply. “Look around you…what do you notice about the forest?”

“I dunno,” she said. “It’s quiet.”

“I’ve been running through this forest since I was at Hogwarts,” Sirius said. “And I’ve never heard it quiet like this.”

Charlie’s eyes widened in realization.

“The birds,” he said, looking up at the trees, scanning the sky wildly. “There’s no birds…no crickets chirping, no junebugs…”

“What…does that mean?” she asked.

“When you’re tracking a dragon,” he began, lowering his voice, “you know you’re close when you can’t hear birds anymore. Everything goes silent, hides…”

“You think there’s a dragon in the forest?” Ginny asked, perking up in interest.

“I don’t know if it’s a dragon, but there’s something dangerous here. We need to try not to draw attention to ourselves…”

“Then how are we supposed to-”

Something shifted in his peripheral vision, and he whipped around, throwing an arm out and shoving both Ginny and Draco behind him. There was a pair of eyes, peering at him from the gloom of the forest.

“Hullo,” he said, barely a whisper. He could see the white glint of teeth; it was a man, and the man smiled at him, and then he leapt forward, wand up, nearly on top of Charlie, but before Charlie could whip his wand out, Ginny darted out from behind him, muttering an incantation. Thick, green vines burst up from the Earth and wrapped around the figure, immobilizing him; Charlie recognized the spell as the one Lupin had used back at the greenhouse.

 _“Expelliarmus,”_ Ginny snapped. The man’s wand ripped from the air and hurtled toward Ginny, but when she touched it, she hissed, jerking her hand away as though she’s been burned.

The man, barefooted and clothed only in a thin, black cloak, thrashed wildly, but remained eerily silent.

“It’s…” Ginny looked up at Severus.

“He’s like the ones in the Alley,” she said. “There’s something wrong with him.”

“Explain,” Severus said, tearing his gaze away from the dark of the forest to look at her.

“I don’t…know,” she said. “It’s his magic, it’s…wrong. Touch his wand.”

“I don’t think I will,” Severus muttered, shooting her a flat look. He backed toward her, unwilling to turn his back to the forest, but Black stepped in front of him, wand up, and nodded. Severus turned and peered at the wand, then prodded it experimentally with his own.

“I see what you mean,” he replied. “It’s tainted by dark magic…necromantic magic, if I’m not mistaken.”

Charlie felt his fist clench, and a slow, poisonous rage began to claw its way up from his belly.

“Bellanova,” he whispered.

“That was…that man from before? Just _who_ the fuck is he?” Ginny asked.

“Someone who is going to _die,”_ he growled, and he saw Ginny’s expression turn wary.

He turned his back toward her, unable to bear the look on her face, and tried to flatten the hate out of his face and voice. The man Ginny had immobilized had finally fallen still, and was watching them with cold, intelligent eyes.

“You’re not an Inferius,” Charlie said to him. “Inferi can’t use magic. What are you?”

The man smiled again, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

“Who gives a fuck?” Ginny asked. “He’s creepy! Sirius…I’m putting him to sleep.”

“Right,” Sirius replied.

The vines around the man glowed a pale green, wrapping around him, branching out until they encased him completely, and finally, they were sucked back into the soil, and his body fell.

Sirius stepped in, muttering over him.

“What are you doing, Black?” Severus asked.

“Stasis charm. He’s in a state of magical exhaustion right now, and he can’t warm himself. He’ll die of exposure on a night like this.”

“You intend to leave him here?”

“Well I’m not going to carry him with us, if that’s what you’re asking,” Sirius replied drily.

From behind them, there was a crack, and they all whipped around in tandem, but it was only Ginny, snapping his wand and flinging it down, as though touching it was physically painful.

“Miss Weasley! Stop touching that with your bare hands!” Severus snapped.

“Well I wasn’t going to just leave it there,” she bit back.

“And here I was under the impression that you were rather competent with a Reductor curse,” he deadpanned.

“Did you just accidentally compliment me?” she smirked at him.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Miss Weasley,” he shot back.

The banter was sort of endearing; Ginny could suck anyone into an argument, he thought with a smile.

A split second later, there was a heavy crash, and Charlie jerked up to see a black-cloaked witch bouncing bodily off of Severus’ shield. That was all the warning they got; he barely had time to throw up his own shield as they were suddenly surrounded by silent assailants. They moved almost unnaturally fast, and Charlie abandoned all pretenses of delicacy, firing curses with the full force of his speed and power and only just managing to keep up with the onslaught. Some of their attackers had wands, and they slung yellowish, sick-feeling magic that he blasted down frantically, unwilling to find out exactly what the spells would do. Those that didn’t have wands simply launched themselves, clawing and grasping like Inferi, but with an awareness and intelligence that no Inferius could possess.

Sirius Black seemed to disappear and reappear at random, on top of the attackers, behind them, beside them, cutting them down and vanishing again, and under any other circumstance, he would have been curious about the technique, but his primary concern was protecting Draco and Ginny, although he quickly found that his concern for Ginny was a bit misplaced.

She was chanting, low and almost guttural, and at her command, vines ripped up from the ground, snatching the combatants and dragging them back toward the Earth, pinning them beneath the foliage, and he felt a pang of loss- somewhere along the line, his baby sister had become formidable, wielding the ancient magic of the Earth itself, and he had missed it, and it felt like he had lost a part of her.

He looked over at Draco, whose expression was openly afraid, but the boy was handling himself, Charlie thought with a touch of pride, watching him wrestle a black cloak to the ground with a Firebrand Whip and finish the job with a well-placed Reductor.

The air grew thick above them, and Charlie could see Severus, waving his wand madly, power pouring off him in dark waves; clouds coalesced, grey and heavy, and a great peal of lightning crashed down into the middle of a band of assailants. He was conjuring a storm, Charlie realized, shivering at the force of it.

And in that split-second’s distraction, a flash of yellow struck him dead in the chest.

“Charlie!” Severus cried, reducing the cloak that hit him into a pile of charred flesh. “Are you…?”

“I’m fine,” he said. There was a low sort of humming in his ears, but…nothing hurt. “I’m alright.”

He waited for another tense second, but nothing happened, and he knew he should feel relieved, but the hit had come too close for comfort.

“Draco, step back a bit,” he said. He pulled at his magic, feeling the shape of his bow manifest solidly in his hands. The force of the Archer’s power spilled from his body, like a vessel overfilled, and he saw Draco stumble underneath it.

“Step back,” he said again. “Keep your wand up. Stay focused.”

Draco nodded, jerking himself upright and blasting a fireball neatly over his shoulder.

He could feel the Archer’s impatience tugging at him, a vitality that pushed against the boundary of his body. It wanted to be free. He grinned.

“Happy to oblige,” he told it.

Fighting in the Archer’s form was like slipping through time; the battle seemed to slow. He could see individual leaves falling from trees, a single drop of sweat sliding down the brow of the cloak in front of him. He whipped an arrow out of the air itself, locked it in place, fired it off, and by the time he heard the ‘thud’ of a freshly-made corpse hitting the ground, he was behind the next opponent, his focus narrowed to a pinprick on the back of the wizard’s head. He heard the crash of lightning crackling around him, the smell of the Earth turning aside for shooting vines, the scent of ashes on the wind. He slid another arrow home, pulled it back, locked it in place, relaxed his grip, let it fly, and body after body tumbled to the ground.

The humming in his ears had intensified, and he growled in frustration. He pulled another arrow home, taking aim at a figure emerging from the forest depths. He took a breath in, focused, and…saw the witch in full light. Her hair was an unassuming, dirty blond. Her nose was crooked at the bridge, broken and never healed, her mouth was wide, stretching across her face. She walked with an impudent sort of grace, as though blatantly aware of her own power.

He lowered his bow, and let it flicker out.

“Greta?”

She locked eyes and charged at him, and he almost smiled. They had played this game a thousand times. She would bear down on him, merciless, forcing him to meet her strike for strike until she got tired of toying with him and slammed him to the ground, perching on his chest with a lazy “gotcha again, Charlie.”

From across a distance, he could hear Draco calling him.

“Charlie, what are you doing? Put your shield up! Charlie!”

He pushed the sound aside, watching her. She threw curses in quick succession, but as he knocked them aside, something pulled at his awareness.

Another jinx; he deflected it easily.

This magic…

She put on a burst of speed and rained down a volley of spells, and he knocked them away, leaping aside to dodge the last of them.

This magic was…he knew Greta’s magic, deep and angry and fierce as the ocean, always roiling beneath the surface of her, and never, ever calm.

“Greta?” he asked again.

This magic was…not hers. But the humming was getting louder, and suddenly he couldn’t hear his objections over the sound of it. Had something been wrong? He couldn’t remember. But how could anything be wrong, when Greta was here, whole and alive.

He stumbled toward her, and the first of the cutting curses hit him dead-on. He could feel the impression of pain, from somewhere far away, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter when his wand arm was sliced open, it didn’t matter when a long gash ripped across his thighs and drove him to his knees. He would crawl to her if he had to. She raised her wand, aimed it straight at his face. He looked up at her, and God, he’d forgotten how blue her eyes were...

And then Draco was between them, and Draco raised his wand at her, and…

“Draco? What are you doing? Stop!”

And she was blown apart. Blood sprayed into the air, hanging like a warm mist, splattering both of them, hitting his hair and his face. He could taste copper. The humming was screaming at him now, screaming at him to raise his wand and kill the boy, _kill the boy,_ but no…that was wrong. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t hear what it was. He couldn’t hear anything over the noise in his ears. And then, he was being hauled to his feet.

Ginny had him by the collar; her wand was on him.

_“Finite Incantatem!”_

Suddenly, the humming stopped. He could hear the battle raging, Sirius and Severus blasting black cloaks away with lightning and fire. And Ginny…Ginny’s little fist was balled up in the collar of his shirt and she had hauled him down to where their noses were almost touching.

“Charles _Gideon_ Weasley, you selfish _fuck,”_ she growled. “Would you really make us watch you die over just the memory of her?”

He blinked at her.

“Don’t make that face at me Charles. Don’t you think I know what your _stupid_ face looks like when it’s in love?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the reality of what he had almost done crashing down on him. “Ginny, I’m so fucking sorry.”

“You’d do better to tell that to Draco,” she grumbled, letting go of his shirt and whipping around, discharging a series of cutting curses into a group of cloaks that had wandered too close.

“Draco?”

The boy looked shell-shocked, spattered with drying blood, wand clenched in his fist, eyes wet with unshed tears. He’d seen the boy kill already that day, tossing fireballs or cutting curses from long range, but it was clearly the first time Draco had been close enough to see the light go out in the eyes of the life he’d taken.

“Are you alright?”

Draco seemed to snap back to himself, eyes narrowing at the scene in front of him.

“I’m fine,” he said flatly, and Charlie knew from thirty years and six siblings that he was absolutely not fine, but all he could do was nod helplessly and turn back to the battle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, by the way, this is my Tumblr: 
> 
> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	40. Draco Malfoy and the Unfettered Chaos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stuff gets hectic as hell in this chapter! 
> 
> Trigger warnings for mild violence.

“I’m fine,” Draco said. He raised his wand, firing off cutting curses numbly at any black cloak that passed into his line of vision. He felt…tired. The sight of Charlie looking up at the wand between his eyes with oblivious, awestruck longing…something had flared up in him, some manic energy had graced him with a speed and power that he had never known was a part of him. But now, the power was gone, and he was just tired.

How long could they keep this up, he wondered. It seemed like every cloak he killed was replaced by two more. They were pouring out of the gloom of the forest like swarming ants, and he felt the beginnings of fear prickling at the back of his neck. He blasted one cloak back, and another was on top of him, and they were getting closer, and he jerked back but he couldn’t get away. He stumbled and fell and the cloak leaped at him, and suddenly it was…

A ferret?

The little white ferret squealed and scampered away, and Draco looked up, and there were the Weasley twins, their wands blazing in tandem.

Ferrets, everywhere.

“Thought you might appreciate the aesthetic,” said the earless one, George, grinning and shooting him a wink.

Ginny had caught sight of her brothers, and her vines became lassos, wrapping up cloaks and pitching them into the air for the twins to shoot down, laughing hysterically. The sky was raining ferrets.

He looked around wildly, and Theo was sprinting toward him with… _Pansy?_

She was clutching the back of Theo’s robes, running along behind him in a black minidress and bright-red, sky-high heels, squealing every time a spell crashed into her shield.

“DRACO!” she shrieked. “I cannot believe… _REDUCTO!_ I cannot believe the nerve of you-oh, get away from me you little CREEP! RELASHIO! Draco Malfoy, how dare you go and fuck off to another dimension, OH MY GOD why are there RATS EVERYWHERE?!”

“They’re not rats!” Theo corrected, shouting over the chaos, “They’re ferrets.”

“Rodents! There are rodents EVERYWHERE and…omigod it just crawled across my FOOT…”

“Pansy, look out!”

Pansy whipped her wand up, eyes narrowed, and blasted a cloak straight out of the sky.

“WATCH WHERE YOU’RE THROWING PEOPLE, WEASLEY!”

“Theo, what the actual fuck are you doing here?” Draco hissed. “And _why did you bring Pansy?!”_

“I…you wouldn’t listen to me, and I…I don’t know, Draco! I panicked!”

“Draco! Stay focused!”

He looked up just in time to see Charlie leap in front of him, shooting down a volley of hexes and firing back flash-quick silver arrows in kind.

“REDUCTO,” Pansy shrieked. “Oh GOD DRACO I JUST KILLED THAT WITCH!”

“CALM DOWN, Pansy! You can’t kill them! They’re already dead.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN ALREADY DEAD?! Oh God, get AWAY FROM ME! REDUCTO! Ugh, my _dress is hiking up!”_

The appearance of the twins, who fought in a well-practiced rhythm, and Pansy and Theo, who were haphazard but powerful, drove a new vigor behind Draco’s spells, but at the edge of the forest, he could see rows of white teeth, all smiling wordlessly, and what looked like thousands of eyes, and his hope pierced and deflated.

But beside him, Fred and George Weasley were undaunted, lobbing fireworks into the gloom, laughing madly as a great blue-and-gold dragon burst into being and exploded into a shower of blazing sparks. A Catherine’s wheel flared, then a cluster of rockets, then a dazzling blaze of sparklers.

“Vanish them!” Ginny shouted, tossing a jet of red light at a rocket, and Draco watched as it multiplied tenfold when struck by the spell.

The fireworks burst and crackled and flared, and just when the air was so thick with magic he could almost breathe it in, Draco felt it.

A stag, cantering straight into the darkness of the forest. The magic was electric, buzzing through Draco’s body like lightning, or fire. He didn’t need to turn or look to know… it was Potter.

“Call your patronus!” Potter cried. “It drives them back!”

Potter’s stag was followed by streaks of silver, as one by one they called forth a patronus in turn, and Draco stared, fascinated, wondering which creature belonged to whom.

“I can’t cast a patronus,” Pansy said sullenly.

“It’s alright,” Draco replied. “Neither can I.”

“Stay behind me, then,” said Theo, stepping protectively in front of them.

 _“Expecto Patronum!”_ he cried, and from his wand sprang an eagle owl, spreading its massive wings and streaking away, its pearly glow cutting through the gloom.

“Wow…Theo!” Pansy breathed, stunned, for once, into silence.

Draco was pulled from his reverie literally; Ginny had seized him by one arm and Theo by the other and she was shoving them toward the forest.

“I hope you can run in those shoes, Parkinson,” she barked. “We’re getting the fuck out of here.”

“You’d be shocked at what I can do in heels, Weasley,” she shot back, tugging down the hem of her dress as she ran.

Up ahead of him, Black was shoving Potter and Weasley through the portal, followed by Fred and George, who held their noses and mimed diving. Ginny was still tugging them along, and she pulled them with her when she jumped, and again, he had the odd sensation of falling in the wrong direction, spinning through space until he hit the ground.

He took in the scene as he climbed to his feet; it seemed that the black cloaks had found their way through the portal. Dozens of them scattered the floor, piles of dead. Draco stared into a pair of vacant eyes. They looked human, but…

He was shocked out of his musing by Molly Weasley, racing across the room and flinging herself at Potter and Weasley. The rest of the Weasleys descended on them, then Granger, sobbing, then Lupin and Black and Lovegood and Dean Thomas. They were like an amorphous blob of red, with brown and black and blond sprinkled in, shouting and crying and pounding each other on the back, laughing and spinning each other around.

The entire Aurory had arrived with a team of Healers, and had begun running diagnostic scans on the bodies. Longbottom and Lupin were in the middle of a shouting match with the pink-haired woman from earlier and a middle-aged man that Draco had never seen before.

And, standing away from the crush of hugging Weasleys with a look of undisguised disgust, was his mother. Her hair had fallen halfway down from its usual, tight bun, and her face was streaked with soot, and there was a wide splash of crimson across the front of her white silk blouse.

_Oh God._

_“Mother,”_ he breathed, choking at the sight of her. “Mother!”

She locked eyes with him, and he ran to her, skidding on broken glass, and she threw her arms around him. The blood on the front of her blouse was still wet.

“Oh, Draco. My Draco,” she whispered, pressing him against her with both arms.

“Mother, you’re bleeding!”

He looked around frantically and spotted Black, who had just finished mending a deep gash on Percy Weasley’s cheek.

“Black!” he cried. “Sirius!”

The man looked up, and his eyes widened.

“Cissy?” he said.

“Sirius,” Mother replied.

He strode over, caught sight of the blood, and broke into a run.

“Cissy,” he said again.

“It’s alright,” she replied. “Molly Weasley already healed it.”

He stepped close to her, crowding her in a way that Draco had only ever seen his father dare to do, and cupped her cheek. There was dried blood on his hand, and it smeared across her face. Draco wanted to push him away from her, to wipe it off.

He wrapped his arms around her, and his mother seemed to sag against him, and something about that felt wrong, like Draco was watching something he shouldn’t see.

“I’m going to take you home, alright?” Black said, whispering in her ear, still holding her.

“Draco-”

“Draco’s fine. Draco was with me and Severus the whole time, yeah? Let’s go home, Cissy, OK? Draco will be right along behind us.”

“Alright,” she said. “Draco, I…I’ll see you shortly.”

“Yes, mother,” he said. “Until then.”

And Black apparated her away. Draco’s hands were shaking. He couldn’t hear himself think; Fred and George had lit off another firework, Lupin was still shouting at the two Aurors, the whole Weasley family was yelling all at once. He caught sight of Theo, and

_Shit. Theo!_

Theo had always been easily overwhelmed by noise and crowds and people in general, really, and right now he looked as though he might jump out of his skin at any moment, and Draco felt a twist of sympathy.

“He won’t leave without you,” Pansy said flatly as Draco made his way over to them.

“Theo…let’s step out for some air, yeah?” Draco said placatingly.

“Is your mother all right?” Pansy asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Good. Then I’m leaving. I didn’t sign up for a Weasley family reunion. I expect you to Floo me tomorrow Draco, but not before noon, or I’m sure I’ll still be drunk.”

She kissed him and Theo once briskly on the cheek and stalked off, glass crunching beneath her heels, and he tugged Theo gently by the arm, helping him through a shattered window and out into the early light of morning.

He sat down right in the dirt behind an old toolshed, leaning against the back of it, and cast a warming charm, and Theo settled down next to him and let out a deep breath.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” he said.

“Me too,” Draco replied, looking over at him. Theo’s handsome face looked tired, and it hit Draco all at once, how tired _he_ was. They’d been fighting straight through the night. They’d almost died.

“I’m sorry I left you,” Theo said. “The night at the battle. I should have gone with you. Instead of Greg and Vince.”

Draco blinked at him, confused.

“I wouldn’t have let you do it, you know. I would have dueled you if I had to.”

“Do what, Theo?”

“Turn Harry Potter over to the Dark Lord. I wouldn’t have let you. That’s why I should have gone.”

Draco looked at him, at his sweat-damp hair, and a scrape on the bridge of his nose, and his eyes, warm and brown and scared, and he loved him so much he could have choked on it.

“Is that really why you went after him? To capture him?” Theo asked.

“I don’t know,” Draco said honestly.

“Well,” said Theo, with a considering look, “I should have gone with you, regardless.”

They leaned against each other, listening to the chaos echoing from inside the greenhouse.

“Theo?” Draco asked, “How did my mother end up here?”

“She was at the Parkinsons’ for tea, and she heard me come to fetch Pansy.”

“Which you did because…?”

“I…you wouldn’t listen. You were going to go through that portal and you didn’t even know where it went, and I…”

Theo was wringing his hands and rocking.

“Hey, it’s OK,” Draco murmured. “I didn’t give you much reason to trust me when I said I’d come back. I’m…Theo, I’m sorry.”

Theo’s father had hated the sight of the rocking, and had taken a belt to Theo if he caught him at it.

Draco grabbed him by the elbows and squeezed, a trick he’d learned as a child, and immediately, Theo stilled.

The celebratory yelling had turned into a real yelling, and he could hear Ginny having a rather audible row with her mum.

“…can’t just go diving through holes in the ground!”

“It wasn’t a _hole in the ground,_ it was a _portal,_ and in case you hadn’t noticed, it took us to Ronald and Harry!”

“And not a one of you thought to tell your father and I _-”_

“WHY? _Why_ would we tell you? You would have tried to stop us from going!”

“ _Because you had no business going!_ ”

“YOU DON’T GET TO DECIDE WHAT IS AND ISN’T MY BUSINESS!”

He could hear Ginny before he could see her, muttering darkly to herself, icy snow crunching under her boots. She came flying around the corner of the toolshed without looking, tripped over Draco, and tumbled across his and Theo’s lap.

“Miss Weasley…are you alright?” Theo asked, helping her right herself.

“Ugh. STOP calling me “Miss Weasley,” you sound like you’re about to dock me house points for being late to a potions lesson.”

“Sorry,” said Theo quietly.

She looked up at him, and the frustration seemed to leak out of her.

“Budge over, Draco,” she said, shoving him and slotting herself between them.

“Sorry, Theo. You can just call me Ginny, though, yeah?”

“Alright, Ginny,” he said.

A moment later, Charlie’s freckled face peered around the corner, and Ginny groaned audibly.

“What do you _want,_ Charles?”

“Only to tell you that everyone’s gone home. Mum and dad left too.”

“Grimmauld home, or the Burrow home?”

“The Burrow. Mum’s making lunch.”

“Oh, joy.”

“Don’t be ugly, Ginny. You were out of line, yelling at her like that.”

“ _I was out of line? Me?”_

“Yes, you! She was only worried about you! You’re her daughter!”

 _“Me being her daughter is NOT more important than me being myself,”_ she cried, leaping to her feet. “I’m not going to sit back while my family is in danger just to _make her feel better.”_

Charlie sighed, and held out his arms, and she glared at him, but she leaned into them all the same.

“Alright,” he said finally. “Let’s just go home.”

He reached out a hand for Draco, and then for Theo, as though he’d forgotten that the boy didn’t actually live with them, and he apparated the lot of them straight into the Burrow’s garden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am literally going crazy inside my house, so as always, feel free to talk to be on Tumblr: 
> 
> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	41. Draco Malfoy and the Ones He Would Miss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE BOYS ARE FINALLY BACK!!!!!

The back garden of the Burrow was, without a doubt, the most raucous scene Draco had ever witnessed. Picnic tables were laden down with food, platters of sandwiches and tureens of steaming soup, a cauldron full of hot chocolate, and large, brown jugs of what looked like homemade firewhiskey. The twins had bewitched fireworks to follow their brother Percy around, blasting into the sky above him at two-minute intervals, and everyone seemed to be pressed up against Potter and Weasley, practically on top of them, laughing and crying and hugging them. A strawberry-haired toddler was running barefooted, weaving between their legs, until she was snatched up and tossed into the air by Sirius Black.

“Mon petit amour! Oh, tu m'as manqué,” he cried, spinning her around, his smile lighting up at her wild laughter. “Mon doux petit coeur!”

“You give me back my niece, Sirius Black,” Ron Weasley exclaimed, reaching for her and grinning as Sirius clutched her close to his chest.

“Never!” Sirius cried dramatically. “I’ll never surrender the princess!”

Somewhere an infant began to howl, and another little head of red hair, wrapped in a thick pink blanket, was passed through the kitchen door of the Burrow from Percy to George to Arthur Weasley, who cradled the child with a look of absolute adoration on his face.

Potter and Weasley were loudly recounting some tale or another, yelling and waving their arms animatedly, and Dean Thomas was laughing at the top of his lungs. A moment later, Longbottom apparated into the middle of the garden, and the celebratory hugging began anew, Longbottom grabbing both boys and squeezing them tight, pounding them on the back.

Draco shot a worried glance over to Theo, but he seemed to be taking the chaos in stride, observing the scene with the sort of unblinking interest that he reserved for untested magic, or a particularly difficult arithmantic calculation.

He realized as they made their way up the garden path that he had been leaning against Charlie, and apparently leaning too heavily; Charlie stumbled suddenly, and Draco snatched him by the arm to keep him from falling.

Ginny narrowed her eyes at him, and pushed back his thick, black winter cloak to reveal deep gashes across his chest and thighs, and she ushered him up the path and through the Burrow kitchen without another word.

“Why didn’t you say you were hurt, dummy?” she asked, shoving him rather forcefully into a chair at the kitchen table.

Charlie snorted and rolled his eyes.

“It’s not that serious, Gin.”

“Whatever. I’m getting Luna.”

“LUNA!” she bellowed, poking her head out the kitchen window. “LUNA MY BROTHER IS DUMB! PLEASE HELP HIM!”

“WHICH BROTHER?” Luna shouted back, and Draco snickered to himself.

Minutes later, she was peeling up the hem of Charlie’s t-shirt and doctoring a rather deep-looking gash, and Draco couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of ink, the silhouette of a Hungarian Horntail in heavy, black lines across his left pectoral, the top of a line of text wrapped around his hip, hidden by the waistband of his jeans. Theo was watching the spell knitting the flesh back together with a sort of morbid curiosity, and he knew before the words were even out of his friend’s mouth that poor Luna was about to be interrogated about the principles of healing magic.

They turned away as Charlie shucked down his muggle blue jeans to let her mend the torn flesh on his legs.

“I hope you’re wearing clean underpants, Charles,” Ginny quipped.

“Oh my God. Please shut up.”

“They do look a bit like they could use a wash,” Luna said.

“I hate both of you.”

“You don’t hate Luna,” Ginny shot back. “She’s too precious.”

“You are rather precious, Luna,” Charlie agreed. “No, you’re right, Gin, but I do hate you though.”

“No you don’t. I’m your favorite sister.”

“Hardly. Hermione’s my favorite sister.”

“Oh, well played, Charlie.”

Theo looked like he was trying very hard not to raise one eyebrow, and the sight of it made Draco snicker, which made Ginny giggle, which made Luna laugh out loud. Then Charlie started laughing, clutching his freshly healed belly and grimacing and laughing anyway, and the sight of his obvious pain made Ginny burst into hysterics. Within seconds, Luna was nearly rolling on the floor, and Draco felt all of the madness of the day and night before come bubbling up in him, laughing until there were tears streaming down his face, and Theo was watching them all with a look that plainly said he thought they were barking mad, and somehow that made everything funnier.

“Alright, you pack of hyenas,” said Black, poking his head through the window. “Come and have some lunch.”

They filed out of the kitchen, and Draco stopped and caught Black’s eye before crossing the yard into the garden.

“Er…Sirius?” he said, “my mother…?”

“She’s quite alright,” Black replied. “Just got hit by a bit of broken glass. She’s resting in the Chantilly Suite; those were her rooms when she was a girl. Snape stayed to keep her company.”

He looked up at the man, searching his face. He had the same straight, proud nose and full lips as Mother, but where Mother had ended up with light skin and white-blonde hair, Sirius shared the dark, almost sultry features that were typical of the Black family. His hair was parted on one side, spilling around his face and down to his shoulders in dark waves. His long lashes were inky against his olive-brown cheeks. And his eyes were the color of a storm. He looked so much like Aunt Bella that Draco shivered a bit, and looked away.

“You cold?” he asked, misinterpreting the gesture. “Come on then, we warmed up the garden.”

Draco had grown up looking at the charred hole where Sirius had been blasted off Mother’s family tapestry, believing him to be some sort of bogeyman. The sight of him, walking through the garden, bold and alive, handsome face lit up with laughter, was so contrary to the mental image Draco had created for the sinister figure of Sirius Black that he felt an irrational anger, as though the man had wronged him by failing to live up to Draco’s shadowy vision.

Draco followed him over to a long stretch of picnic tables that had been shoved up against each other and sat down, and Charlie and Theo slid in on either side of him. Luna sat between Theo and George, and across the table from him, Ginny shoved Weasley aside to wedge herself between he and Hermione, who had slotted in between the lost boys the second they fell from the portal and hadn’t left their sides since.

It almost seemed to happen in slow motion; Potter and Weasley looked up and locked eyes with him at the same moment, and both leapt to their feet in tandem, wands out.

“Malfoy?” Weasley yelped, gaping at him in a mixture of outrage and confusion, “What are you doing in my back yard?!”

“Oh, sit _down_ Ronald,” Ginny barked, just as Hermione said, “Honestly, Harry, it’s only Draco.”

“Draco? I’m sorry…we’re on a first-name basis now? Can someone _please explain-”_

But Ginny did not explain. Ginny grabbed him by the hem of his filthy shirt and jerked him back down into his seat, grabbing a biscuit from the platter in front of her and shoving it into her brother’s mouth whole.

Potter was still standing, looking back and forth between Draco and Theo in bewilderment, and Draco felt the weight of the sheer stupidity of his situation crash down on him in force.

He didn’t belong here. Between Ginny, whose range of emotions consisted of either fierce affection or outright disgust, with nothing in between, and Charlie, who had so many kid brothers he apparently just forgot that Draco wasn’t actually one of them, he’d found himself sucked into the Weasleys’ strange gravity. He’d fallen in beside them, and there was so much shared history that it had felt almost…natural. The nights he’d stayed up with Granger, climbing the sliding ladders to reach the oldest and darkest of the Black family’s collection; the hours he’d spent sitting in silence with Longbottom, sneaking shots of calming drought into his teacup when he wasn’t looking. The way Ginny would lean against him the same way she leaned against Luna or her brothers. The way Molly Weasley had spelled the flour off the front of his borrowed apron. The muggle thrift shop. The record player. He’d been foolish enough to fall into their orbit, forgetting, for the time, that he didn’t belong with them.

And he was going to lose them; he could tell it from the anger in Potter and Weasley’s eyes, and the way that hurt caught him by surprise. Any second now, they would see the look on Potter’s face and remember who had been sleeping under their roof with them. He was a Death Eater. A Malfoy. There was a whole war between them.

Finally, Potter sat back down, staring at him silently. He smoothed any trace of emotion from his expression, regarding Potter with no more than a momentary, bored acknowledgement. There was nothing for it, and he absolutely would not allow himself to cry about it now. He turned to listen to Theo, who was, chattering animatedly to Luna about the applications of Charms theory to Healing spells, oblivious to the fact that he, too, was a snake in a den of lions.

“…always wondered how Healers managed to bypass the time-to-space ratio restriction,” Theo said.

“Oh!” Luna replied happily. “Yes! It’s quite remarkable, really; have you read August-Pearson’s Principles of Intentionality…”

Charlie had leaned over the table in a low conversation with Weasley, who was eyeing Draco crossly.

“…still don’t understand why he has to live with-”

Before he could finish his lamenting, George leaned over and shoved half a sandwich in his open mouth, cutting him off mid-sentence.

“Oi, Draco! Pass the biscuits, would you?,” Fred said. “Would you like some hot chocolate? Mum made it.”

“Don’t drink it, Draco,” said Luna, Ginny, Charlie and Hermione in unison.

“Can’t believe Draco Malfoy is-”

“Have another biscuit, Ronnie,” Ginny said loudly, shoving the still-warm sweet into his mouth.

“Sure you don’t want some? Alright then…Theo? Want some hot chocolate?”

“Don’t drink it, Theo!”

“And who is that?” Ron started.

“Theo Nott! He was in your _year,_ Ronald, you had lessons with him every _day.”_

The conversation shifted from Potter and Weasley to Hermione and Dean Thomas, who were recounting the rescue mission to an exhausted-looking Longbottom.

“…and then people started crawling back through the portal, and we thought they needed help at first, until they started trying to kill us,” Thomas explained.

“But we couldn’t move out of the radius of the runes we were connected to or risk breaking the spell and trapping everyone there,” said Hermione.

“Yeah! Have you ever tried maintaining a ritual spell while dueling?” asked George.

“Not fun,” said Fred. “Would not recommend.”

“We nearly had to break the ritual,” said Hermione, a shadow of fear flickering across her face. “But Percy sent a patronus to Molly and Arthur, and then Theo showed up with Pansy Parkinson and Draco’s mum…”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that,” Neville said. “Narcissa Malfoy’s supposed to be on wand arrest; she’s not to use magic other than ordinary household charms. Remus had one hell of a row with Tonks and Donohue about it.”

Draco stiffened, trying to listen without revealing his eavesdropping.

“She won’t face charges,” Longbottom said, soothing Hermione, who looked on the verge of protesting. “There are exceptions made for life-or-death circumstances.”

He exhaled slowly.

_God._

He’d forgotten about the wand arrest. She could have landed herself in Azkaban. He’d been terrified at the sight of her bleeding, as close to frightened as she would allow herself to appear. He’d missed her. He wasn’t even angry anymore. He’d missed her so much.

“What exactly…I mean, who were those…” Longbottom began.

“Those people?” asked Hermione. “We don’t know.”

“We took in the ones we recovered alive for questioning, but…they…it’s like they can hear and understand us, but they can’t…talk.”

“No shit, mate. It’s creepy as hell.”

With a belly full of food, the sleepless night began to catch up to them. It was sunny out, and Potter and Weasley had melted all the snow in the garden and stretched out under one of the floating balls of flame that Molly and Arthur had conjured to warm the air, and Hermione was tucked between them, her head on Weasley’s shoulder, her arm twined protectively through Potter’s. Luna was leaning against the trunk of a pear tree, laughing as George transfigured a pile of leaves into tiny dragons, and sent them swooping around her head. Sirius had conjured an array of large, squashy armchairs, and promptly fallen asleep in one, his arms wrapped around the little girl he had been holding earlier. Fleur Delacour, who Draco remembered from the Tournament, was walking through the orchard beyond the garden with Charlie and an older, more willowy version of Charlie, who Draco assumed to be Bill. Someone had given Percy the pink-bundled baby, and he was resting in an armchair, watching her sleep with a mixture of fondness and alarm. The rest of them had fallen asleep in chairs, or sprawled across the garden in patches of sun. They had all apparated straight here, and Draco’s clothes were still covered in blood. He looked around at the family that wasn’t his, all dozing happily under balls of warm flame, and he was struck by the need to run, to get away from them first before they threw him out.

He shook Theo, who had leaned against him and dozed off, and the boy blinked sleepily at him, his lips tilting up at the corners.

“Is it time to go?” he asked, yawning.

“Yeah,” Draco replied. “You’re all dirty, and I’ve got blood on me, and we both probably ought to get some rest in a proper bed.”

Draco saw Theo through the Floo, and then paused, staring into the bright-green flames, uncertain.

“Grimmauld Place,” he said finally, deciding that he wanted, before he did anything else, to see his mother.

But when he searched the house, he found only Severus, sitting in the library, poring over a stack of books.

“Have you seen Mother?” he asked.

Severus looked up at him, his face blank.

“Yes.”

“Where is she?” he asked. “I don’t know where the Chantilly Room is, but Black…er…Sirius said she was there.”

“Your mother has returned to the Manor,” he replied flatly. “She wished to rest in her own home.”

“Did she…did she say anything before she left?”

“No, Draco.”

“Oh. I see. Alright then.”

He turned on his heel; a hot grief shooting through him. She’d left without saying goodbye. The trek between the library and his room was familiar enough that he made it automatically. He stripped his bloody clothes, scrubbed himself in the shower, pulled on his clean pajamas, crawled into bed, and stared at the ceiling; the memory of Mother clutching him, whispering _“my Draco”_ was on repeat in his brain. After what seemed like hours, he heard the sound of voices from the floors below. He heard the pipes groan as Charlie returned to his room and turned on his shower. He heard laughter down the corridor across from them, and the sound of someone running, and he felt _lonely_ again, like an outsider in Potter’s home and Potter’s life; like an interloper. He wanted his mother. He wanted to go home.

Daylight had faded into dusk, and unable to stand the combination of dark and silence, he crept down the hall and stood in front of Charlie’s door.

 _“I’ll be here to watch your back,”_ he’d said…Draco reached out, his hand hovering above the doorknob, wondering if he should knock, then thinking of the number of times he’d seen Ginny come bursting through doors unannounced.

He turned the knob and peered into the dim light. Charlie sat up in bed, blinking at him, then his face softened into fondness, and he peeled the corner of his bedspread back.

Draco slipped in, shut the door behind him, crawled into Charlie’s bed, and promptly burst into tears, and Charlie scooped him up and rubbed his back wordlessly, until Draco’s head was heavy enough to fall against his shoulder, and his eyes were heavy enough to close, and as he drifted, he prayed that the man would never remember what he really was. He didn’t want to have to miss Charlie when he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	42. Draco Malfoy and the One Thing He Wanted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is a short bit of angsty Draco for your day today.
> 
> Trigger warning for internalized homophobia.

When Draco awoke, Charlie was wrapped around him like the giant squid, and Ginny and Luna were both standing in the doorway, peering down at them.

“I told you he’d be in here,” Ginny said, smirking at him.

“Awww,” Luna said. “That’s so sweet!”

“It is not sweet,” Draco grumbled sleepily. “I’m being crushed to death. Nothing about this is sweet.”

“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” Ginny said gently to Charlie, shaking his shoulder. He groaned and clutched Draco tighter, and she rolled her eyes, perched herself on the edge of the bed, and began rubbing his back, and after a moment, his grip began to go slack, and he cracked his eyes open.

“Morning sunshine,” she said, grinning at him. “You’ve got a letter, and the owl won’t leave until he gives it to you, so up you get.”

Draco padded back to his room to change out of his pajamas, pulling on Charlie’s old jumper and a pair of muggle jeans, and by the time he made it to the kitchen, Charlie was already down there, exchanging a slice of bacon for his letter from the Menagerie and pulling his fingers away just in time to avoid a nip.

Potter’s eyes were on him, assessing him with the narrowed focus of a predator assessing the threat, and the cold competence in the gaze sparked something low in his belly.

“Morning, Draco,” said Hermione. Weasley’s head jerked up.

“What is-ermph-”

Without looking up from her breakfast, Ginny snatched a boiled egg off the tray in front of her and shoved it into Weasley’s mouth whole, cutting him off mid-sentence. He narrowed his eyes at her, his cheeks puffing out as he chewed around the mouthful of food, and Charlie snickered, passing him a goblet of orange juice.

A moment later, Severus strode in, and slid into a chair between Charlie and Luna.

“Professor Snape?” Weasley yelped in alarm.

“Yes, Mr. Weasley. It appears your acute powers of deduction have not failed you,” said Severus flatly.

“But…but..why is Snape…?”

“Oh come off it, Ron, he lives here now,” Ginny said, rolling her eyes.

“I most certainly do not,” Severus shot back.

“Sure you don’t…that’s why you fell asleep reading in the library last night and Luna had to put you to bed.”

“I happen to be in the middle of a rather important bit of research, and unfortunately all of the extant copies of the texts I need are a part of the Black family collection,” he snapped back. “I hardly think-”

He stopped in mid-sentence, realizing he’d been baited and fallen for it, and Ginny burst into giggles, ignoring his dark look.

“Mr. Potter. Mr. Weasley,” he said, straightening up and changing the subject, “I cannot truthfully say I am glad to see you back, but at least for your family’s sake, I suppose it is fortunate that you emerged from your ordeal alive.”

“Er. Thanks, I think,” said Potter. His voice was scratchy and low, as though he were catching a cold. The sound of it snagged on something in Draco’s chest.

 _Stop that,_ he told himself sharply. _You’re not going to start that again._

He looked away from Potter, catching Ginny’s eye.

“Ginny,” he said mildly. “Could you pass the orange juice please?”

Potter’s eyes narrowed.

_Interesting._

“Thank you, Ginny,” he said, testing a theory.

“Sure, Draco,” she replied, not looking up from the Quibbler she was reading.

Potter’s gaze darkened, and Draco flattened out his expression to keep the smirk off his face.

“Oh, Hermione?” Draco asked, purposely using her first name. “Do you think you might see Theo at the Ministry today?”

“What? Oh, I’m sure I will. We’re coauthoring a paper, and we’ve got revisions together. Did you want to see him? I was going to ask him around for dinner.”

Potter was outright glaring at him, and Draco greeted the rest of his housemates warmly as they trickled into the kitchen.

“Morning Neville! Did you finally get to catch up on some sleep? Oh, hello Dean! Here, let me conjure you a chair!”

Weasley was looking at him as though he might sprout tentacles at any moment, and Potter was glaring daggers, and the ghost of his immature, eleven-year-old self was positively gleeful, storing away that bit of knowledge for future use.

Hermione left for work, kissing Potter on the forehead and Weasley quickly on the mouth, blushing as most of the table erupted into wolf-whistles. Longbottom shifted over into her vacated chair and the three boys fell into Auror shop talk, with Longbottom filling them in on the cases they’d missed while they were away. Ginny was chatting to Thomas, nicking a slice of bacon off his plate and grinning at him.

Minutes later, Black walked in, half-dressed and damp with sweat, with Lupin trailing behind him.

“You two finally came up for air then,” Ginny teased.

“Nope,” Black shot back, and grabbed Lupin by the wrist, pulling him close and pressing a deep, open-mouthed kiss to the man’s lips. “Not yet,” Black said, low, almost inaudible. “Never.” And he kissed Lupin again.

Draco’s eyes widened, and he looked around wildly expecting shock, or outrage, or scorn, but the only response was another round of wolf-whistles, and Weasley miming loud, dramatic gagging noises. He sat, frozen, unable to look away; Lupin’s cheeks had blushed red, and he was holding onto Black’s arm as though he needed it to stay upright, and they were looking at each other with an expression of such blatant tenderness, and Draco’s heart broke.

He tore his gaze away, pulling up high, white walls in his mind, keeping the torrent of sorrow behind them, at bay. He fixed something smooth and flat onto his face. He would not cry. Not now.

But behind the walls his occlumency built, sorrow battered against his mind. They had just kissed each other; the scion of the House of Black, last of his bloodline, had just kissed another man before God and everyone, and his whole heart broke with how much he wanted that. To be able to love whoever he loved without losing his family because of it.

Against his will, the pattern of half his childhood repeated itself, and he found his eyes drawn to Potter as though compelled by some magic, and when he found Potter’s eyes, there was something searching in them, and he couldn’t bring himself to look away, but if he didn’t break Potter’s gaze _now,_ then Potter would _know,_ but he couldn’t, and just as he was about to leap up from the table and _run,_ Charlie said,

“Hey Draco, would you pass me the sausages?”

And Draco ripped himself away from whatever spell he was under, and he passed Charlie the sausages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	43. Severus Snape and the Heat, and the Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charlie finds more than he expected to see, but he's hardly complaining, really, and Severus overthinks the whole thing.
> 
> Thank you so much to [VeelaWings](http://archiveofourown.org/users/VeelaWings) for beta reading the smutty bit in this chapter. Thanks for helping me break up my marathon sentences! 
> 
> Trigger warning for sexual content.

In the aftermath of his excursion into whatever that hellscape even was, Severus realized that he had underestimated the importance of discovering the Ministry leak. He was certain that the silent, black-cloaked soldiers- for he was beyond a doubt that is what they were- had been formed from the darkest of the arts. Necromancy- it was the very sort of magic that the Unthinkables had been created to contain. The abomination that would be unleashed if those secrets made their way to light was too awful to imagine. He had to determine who had created those things, what they had to do with Potter, and how exactly Ginny Weasley and Remus Lupin had come to be involved.

His newly-formed truce with Black and Lupin proved to be fortunate in that respect; the collection of literature contained within the Black family library was unrivalled by any other that Severus had personally seen, and he had seen quite a lot.

Tomes as old as the family itself, dating back to the beginning of the Middle Ages, tomes handwritten in the illuminated manuscript of monastic scholars, tomes written in dead tongues; Latin and Old English and Gaelic, Welsh and Anglo-Norman, the Germanic languages of the Goths, some script he recognized as possibly Ural-Altaic, languages he couldn’t recognize, languages he hadn’t known had extant written records.

The library had also, Severus decided after several hours of frustrated searching, been organized by a madman. There was clearly a pattern to the placement of the volumes, but he could not for the life of him figure out what it was. They certainly weren’t alphabetical, nor did they seem to be organized by category.

He supposed it was a blessing in disguise; clearly none of the modern Black descendants had managed to make much use of the centuries of knowledge they’d amassed, and that was just as well. If they’d known what they had, it would have undoubtedly fallen into the hands of Death Eaters, or God forbid, the Dark Lord himself. They had searched for years to obtain the _Surge et Ambula_ manuscript for the Dark Lord, and here was a copy before him, shoved in between two books of Healing spells. If there was any record of the magic that had produced those human-Inferi atrocities, it was sure to be somewhere within this library.

The task was additionally complicated by the fact that Charlie Weasley’s magic in the air was driving him to distraction.

Charlie had become…something like a friend, he supposed, and Severus found that he couldn’t bring himself to push the man away. It was the earnestness. _“You should come by,”_ he’d said, _“We’ve missed having you around,”_ and he’d looked so open, as though his life was a place where Severus belonged, and his absence would leave something missing in it.

And he wanted it, he realized; he wanted someone to feel the absence of him when he was gone. He wanted someone to come looking for him when he didn’t show up to breakfast. He wanted someone to sit beside his bed when he was in pain. And he knew that sort of thinking was dangerous; the more he let himself want it, the more he would feel its loss. He knew better, but…Charlie Weasley had a tattoo of a nonexistent constellation. Charlie Weasley smiled when he saw Severus walk into a room. He wanted to know _why._

And it had been fine, a simple enough job to block off the curiosity beyond a high wall in his mind, until he felt Charlie’s magic. The power in him…the air had seemed alive with it, autumn and gold and so fucking warm, and he hadn’t realized how cold he was until it was racing across his skin. It had almost brought him to his knees. Even now, the memory of it set his pulse racing. Every time Charlie walked into a room, it was like the sun came out from behind the clouds. He wanted to…he wanted…

Something. He wanted something, but he didn’t even know if it had a name.

He could think of little else, and he spent most of the day in a haze of distracted frustration.

In fact, he was so sick of staring at the same page in the same book, unable to absorb any of it, that when Ginny arrived and ushered him down to the kitchen for dinner, he didn’t even complain.

Ginny sat him in between herself and Lovegood, and piled his food on a plate for him before serving herself, and he ignored the scandalized look that Ronald shot her. The subtle tension that had hung like a cloud over the house had evaporated. They chattered and laughed and even their bickering had a sort of joviality to it. After dinner, a droopy-eyed, silver bloodhound appeared and requested in Percy Weasley’s clipped, important tone that they all _“come to the Burrow, because mum’s made pudding, and she wants to see everyone, and she’s fretting a bit, so please hurry.”_

“Are you coming?” Ginny asked Black and Lupin, who were sitting indecently close to each other. “It’s alright if you come, mum will be on her best behavior.”

Black considered the idea for a moment, but finally declined.

“Nah. Go home and see your family. You too, Harry, Ron…”

“You can come, you know!” Ronald cried.

“I know,” he said. “But really, it’s my month to brew Wolfsbane, and I need to get on with it…moon’s coming up, you know.”

“Alright,” Ronald replied unhappily. “But if you change your mind, you can Floo over whenever…”

Severus looked over at Ginny and raised a questioning eyebrow, and she leaned in to whisper to him.

“Mum and Sirius had a big row right after he got out of Azkaban, and mum was bang out of line for it, but she’s too stubborn to apologize, and Sirius reckons it was his fault… That’s why he and Remus don’t come to the Burrow unless Billy brings the girls by, and even then him and mum stay out of each other’s way.”

He remembered that fight; Molly had been all over Black’s case about him sneaking out as a dog at night and turning up drunk in the mornings, and as far as he was concerned, there was nothing out of line about that, but he kept the sentiment to himself.

“Are you coming with us?” she asked. “Mum would like to see you too, you know.”

The idea of the entire extended Weasley family crammed into their tiny kitchen for pudding sounded like a form of torture that rivaled anything the Dark Lord could have imagined, and he shook his head emphatically.

“I’m afraid not. I’m at a critical point in my research.”

“Alright, then. I’ll bring you home something good.”

He managed to escape back to the library before he was trapped in a round of hugging; it seemed that they couldn’t even manage a quick trip through the Floo without a dramatic parting, each of them clinging to Black and Lupin as though they were heading off to sea and may never return.

But the library hardly proved to be the refuge he was hoping for. Some magic was in the air; not Charlie’s, not any magic he recognized, but something. Finally, unable to focus, he set aside his book and trudged to bed in defeat. Perhaps he was only tired; an early night would set him to rights.

But an early night was not in the stars either, it seemed. He stripped out of his clothes, sliding beneath the crisp, white sheet, clad only in his undershirt and pants, but despite the snow falling heavily outside, he was unreasonably hot.

He threw back his bedcovers, turning over on one side, trying to ignore the buzzing energy that had seeped under his door and was permeating the room. He closed his eyes, and the heat tugged at his awareness. It was in the air, on his skin. It was pooling in the core of him.

Arousal…A shiver rose up his back, the tips of his fingers burned. He occluded the feeling, marshaling it into the furthest corner of his mind and building a wall high around it. He did not have the patience for arousal. He had not looked at another person sexually since Regulus died. So, he occluded.

But the heat rose against the wall and spilled over. His skin was flushed, hot like he’d been sunburned. The air in his room turned thick. It felt like…autumn. Autumn, and gold, and so fucking warm. He could feel himself getting hard, and he lost control of it. The wall cracked, and he sucked in a breath, biting back a groan. Fuck he was hard. He rolled over on his belly, grinding his hips helplessly, pressing his cock into the mattress, desperate for the friction, and why was this so intense?

Finally, unable to stand it, he rolled back over and slid his pants down, and his cock sprang free, hard and mottled red. He took it in his hand and stuffed his knuckles in his mouth to stop himself from groaning out loud. He squeezed himself and bucked up into his own hand, and fire shot through him. He stroked himself, but it was frivolous, he knew. He couldn’t…he hadn’t been able to bring himself off since…

He bit down on his knuckles, squeezing his cock until it hurt, willing it to go away, and he couldn’t help but thrust up into the pressure. A deep moan ripped itself from him, long and miserable.

_Please, please just let me…_

And then his door burst open, and the dim light from the sconces flickering in the hallway came pouring through.

“Severus! Are you alright?! I heard you…”

The words died on his lips, and he stood, frozen, staring down at Severus with wide eyes.

 _Get out,_ he tried to say, but it came out,

_“Charlie.”_

Charlie shut the door behind him and took a step toward the bed, and _Severus could feel his fucking magic._ It was like resting in a ray of sun, and God, it felt so good. His hand was still wrapped around his cock, and it was throbbing, and he jerked up into it helplessly, biting back the sounds clawing their way up from his throat.

He wanted to scream at the man for catching him like this, low and naked and half-mad with need, but he couldn’t get the sound out of his mouth. His hand reached out of its own accord, as though the will of his body had departed from his own will. And Charlie took his hand, and sat beside him, unmoving.

“Severus? Are you all right? You look like you’re hurting yourself.”

And indeed, he was squeezing the head of his cock painfully. It had turned almost purple. Charlie took his wrist and tugged it gently, carefully avoiding touching anything but his arm, and he released his grip, gasping at the loss of contact.

“Look, er… I don’t know if this is some kind of like…kink thing, or…which is uh…which is totally fine, of course. I mean, I’m not judging, but…it just looked like you…weren’t enjoying that.”

Charlie was still holding his other hand, stroking it with his calloused thumb.

“Can I…Severus. Do you want me to touch you?” Charlie asked, his voice low, barely above a whisper.

“Yes,” he replied, unable to lie to the man.

“Oh, shit,” Charlie said. “Fuck. Alright.”

He slid Severus’ pants up his thighs, over his bent knees, down around his ankles. He skimmed a hot, heavy hand up under the hem of Severus’ undershirt, running it up the hard plane of his belly to his chest and back down again, and his skin was on fire where Charlie touched him, and he arched up into it, sucking in a breath. Charlie pushed his knees apart and knelt between them, wrapping his hands around Severus’ hips, rubbing the sensitive skin beneath his hipbones, then bending to kiss the inside of his thigh.

“Is this alright?” Charlie asked, and the low growl of his voice shot straight to Severus’ leaking cock.

“Yes,” he said.

Charlie wrapped a hand around the shaft of his cock, and white spots flickered at the edge of his vision.

 _“Oh, fuck,”_ Severus moaned.

He jerked his hips up against Charlie’s grip, desperate for friction, and Charlie stroked him once, slowly, his grip just shy of too tight. Heat ripped through him, and Charlie kept stroking him, his strong hand maddeningly steady.

_Fuck I’m so close, please let me…please…_

He reached out and grabbed Charlie’s other hand, and he could feel Charlie’s thumb again, rubbing little circles against the inside of his wrist. His whole awareness narrowed to a pinprick of hot, white light, and something unraveled inside his belly, and he was coming into Charlie’s hand, _God, yes, finally._ Charlie stroked him through the last aftershock of it, his cum-slicked palm making wet squelching noises against Severus’ still-hard dick.

For a moment, he was weightless, gasping as though he’d been drowning, and in a way, perhaps he had. Charlie had rolled over his body and was pulling Severus towards him, his hot chest warming Severus’ back.

“Is this alright?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Severus.

Charlie lifted his head to slide a pillow beneath it, then curled an arm around his belly, rubbing the skin just below the hem of his shirt with absent fingertips.

He was so fucking warm. He couldn’t tell if it was Charlie’s magic, or his body itself, but the warmth sunk into his skin and settled inside him. The sheer relief caught him off guard, and he drifted, lulled by the rise and fall of Charlie’s chest, solid against his back until he fell into a dreamless sleep.

When he awoke, his first thought was that he was being crushed to death, but after a few disoriented moments, he remembered…

His dick aching in his hand, the force of his own need tearing through his occlumency, Charlie bursting through the door _to rescue him_ as though he was being _murdered in his own bed._ God, what he must have sounded like, rolling around moaning like some kind of…

What had come over him? He hadn’t been able to make himself come since Regulus, or maybe even before that. Since he’d taken the Mark? Since the first Cruciatus? Since the first time he’d killed? He didn’t remember when, but after months bled into years, he’d stopped bothering to try. Arousal seldom struck him, and when it did, he built a wall around it and occluded.

And Charlie…Severus had obviously been missing the signs. Charlie staying by his bedside the night he’d been injured, Charlie reading aloud to him, the gently hopeful look on his face when he’d invited Severus back for dinner. It seemed a bit obvious now. He rolled over in Charlie’s grip and faced him. His face was softer in sleep, relaxed and open. His full lips turned up at the corners as though he’d fallen asleep smiling. His hair spilled around his face, the color of embers in the dark.

He was…stunning, now that Severus bothered to look. He was stunning, and the power of his magic had made Severus _shake_ beneath it, and it was warm like the sun itself.

_What…are you doing in bed with me?_

Something nagged at him, some bitterness in the back of his mind prickled until he realized…Charlie had brought him off without…had he wanted Severus to…?

He considered the idea, imagining what Charlie would look like on his back, his knees spread apart, rutting up against his hand, moaning for him, and the though of it made his cock swell again, and he _wanted that._

The force of the wanting shocked him, and panic began to rise up in him. He twisted in Charlie’s arms, but the man only clutched him and pulled him back. After several unsuccessful attempts to pry up the arm wrapped around his belly, he went completely slack and scooted himself slowly downward until he’d managed to scoot himself off the end of the bed, hitting the ground in a tangle of limbs.

 _“God, you sleep like the dead,”_ he muttered, glaring at the man’s prone form, but at the sight of Charlie reaching out as though searching for him, Severus softened. He pulled his pajamas back on, then perched on the edge of the bed and took Charlie’s hand.

“It’s alright,” he said gently, ignoring the absurd impulse to look around the room to make sure no one was watching. “It’s alright.”

He rubbed Charlie’s hand, and the man stilled, smiling gently in his sleep again, and Severus felt something warm inside his chest, and he jerked away, pushing the feeling back down.

He stumbled across the room and through the door, desperate to put enough distance between them to _think clearly._

He roamed the halls aimlessly for a few minutes, collecting himself, then made his way down to the kitchen; he didn’t exactly _want_ tea, but he needed to do something with his hands.

“Oh, hullo Snape.”

He started violently, before realizing it was only Ginny, who already had a kettle boiling on the stove.

“Couldn’t sleep either? I’ll pour you a cup too; there you are.”

She sat down at the kitchen table and looked at him expectantly, and he pulled out a chair across from her and sat, taking the proffered cup. There was something…disarming about the girl. She was bossy and overbearing, but she had a sort of innate bluntness that couldn’t be bothered with manipulation or deceit, and that made her seem…safe. He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and watched her blow into her teacup.

“Did you have a good visit, Miss Weasley? To see your mum?”

“What? Oh, yeah. Mum was fretting a bit, wanting to see the boys. Mostly everyone crashed there for the night, except Charlie. Oh, and I just brought Draco home a little while ago…Fred kept slipping shots of firewhiskey into his butterbeer, and he fell asleep on Hermione’s lap, so I figured I ought to put him to bed for the night.”

“Astute of you,” he said, smiling at the sight of her trying to drink her tea while it was still nearly boiling. He flicked a mild cooling charm at the cup, and she gulped it, smacking her lips happily.

“Glad we didn’t come back any earlier, though,” she said.

“Oh?” he replied. “And why is that?”

“Uh…did you somehow miss the amount of sex magic in this house?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow at him.

“The…what?”

“The sex magic. Sirius and Remus. We usually ward their bedroom door so it stays in there with them, but it looks like it spilled over the wards.”

“Oh,” Severus replied, chilled by comprehension.

“Pretty gross, right?” she asked, rolling her eyes good-naturedly.

“Yes. Of course. Please excuse me, Miss Weasley.”

He leapt up and nearly ran from the kitchen. The heat hanging in the air, the energy he couldn’t get rid of, the force of his arousal…and Charlie. Had he been compelled into Severus’ bed by magic? There was hardly another explanation for it, he realized. The idea that someone like Charlie could want…Had he laid back and let Charlie…? Had Charlie even been willing?

The realization hit him like a bucket of ice water. Charlie hadn’t wanted to. He’d been compelled, and Severus had taken advantage of that compulsion. He fought back a wave of nausea, staring down the long hallway, and it seemed to get narrower and narrower, and everything was too close to him, too small. He had to get out. He wrenched open the front door and flung himself out into the night. As walked through the empty streets, trying to regain control of his pulse and his breath, the memory of autumn sun rose up in him, gold and warm, and as he forced it back down, a black bitterness settled in its place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)
> 
> If you're stuck on lockdown, feel free to spam my blog. We can be bored together!


	44. Draco Malfoy and the Bond Between Us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! It feels like forever since I've updated, but here's another Draco chapter. I don't want to give too much away, but there's a scene in here that turns out to be fairly pivotal to the plot. And speaking of the plot, we are now officially past the halfway point in this fic. I can't believe how long it got!
> 
> Without further ado, Draco gets a surprise Saturday to himself!

Draco had never been more grateful that Charlie could beat him to a pulp as he was in the days that followed Potter and Weasley’s return. He threw himself at his training with an almost violent intensity, desperate to drive Potter out of his thoughts, and Charlie was quite capable of keeping him distracted. He fought with such obsessive focus that after a week of it, he felt something inside him changing its shape, growing harder. He still couldn’t beat Charlie, or even match him blow-for-blow, but gone were the days of Charlie toying with him like a cat batting around some insect.

After training, he and Charlie spent their afternoons at the Menagerie, picking up their meals in cafés and chip shops, and when they finally made it home, they would both retreat straight to the library, hunting through the shelves for anything that might help them with their case. At first, Draco had been too focused to notice anything strange about it, but something in the back of his mind prickled at him.

Charlie was avoiding something, he realized. Leaving for PT in the mornings before breakfast, taking meals out, returning well after dark. It was almost as though he was avoiding Grimmauld Place. But Charlie didn’t seem inclined to share it, whatever was bothering him, so Draco spent the week watching, curious but unwilling to ask outright.

Saturday morning, Draco woke late to a note that said Charlie had gone to help Hagrid- apparently the cockatrice that was loose in the Forbidden Forest had taken to roaming onto the school grounds- and by the time he dressed and made his way down to the kitchen, everyone else was already down there, halfway through preparing breakfast.

Weasley looked at him as though he intended to make a comment but thought better of it at the sight of Ginny, who was holding a croissant, waiting for him to open his mouth. Draco sighed to himself. This couldn’t continue, he realized. He steeled himself, walked over to the section of countertop where Weasley was dicing fruit, and smiled blandly.

“Good morning. Would you like some help with that?” he asked.

“Er…what?” Weasley replied.

_Good God…_

“That fruit,” Draco said slowly, enunciating. “Would you like me to help you cut it?”

He picked up a knife, grabbed a cantaloupe, and set about quartering it before Weasley had a chance to reply.

“Uh…sure,” Weasley said belatedly. “Right, then.”

Weasley proceeded to dice the rest of his fruit haphazardly, stealing glances at Draco from the corner of his eye. Beside them, Potter sliced ham and passed it to Ginny, who was arranging it in between slices of croissant, and she was leaning against him, and he couldn’t help but notice how their hands kept brushing, and how he kept smiling down at her, and something twisted inside him at the sight of it. He’d known, of course, that they were together. It had been all over the papers in the months after the war. He’d known, but seeing the way he looked at her, gentle and fond…The sight of it _hurt_ , but he couldn’t bring himself to look away because it was the only way he would ever get to see that look on Potter’s face. And his instinct was to take that _hurt_ and turn it into anger, to _hate_ her, but…He couldn’t. He loved her, he realized suddenly. The thought of them together made him _sick,_ but he didn’t hate her. He loved her. Ginny was his friend.

He gathered up all of the bitter longing and built a high wall around it, unwilling to lose her over his purposeless envy.

They ate breakfast in a mostly-companionable silence. Finally, Ginny bolted off to Harpies practice, and gradually, they began to disperse, until Draco found himself sitting in awkward silence with only the Golden Trio.

“Er…Draco?” Granger asked. “We’re about to go look around in the library for anything on ritual magic; would you, uh…like to join us?”

“Oh,” he said, looking up in surprise. “I suppose.”

Weasley’s face was stalwart, and Potter wouldn’t meet his eyes, but they both kept their mouths shut, as they both had undoubtedly been instructed by Granger. She kept up a steady stream of chatter as they made their way up to the library, her tone pinched and just a bit too loud to be casual, but the library fire was crackling in the grate, and the sound of it seemed to dull the awkwardness of the silence between them.

Draco settled into his chair from the previous night and picked up the top book off his stack, watching the trio out of the corner of his eye.

“…be careful when you pick them up; some of them are cursed,” said Granger.

“How do you know what to look for?” Weasley asked.

“Erm…well…I don’t, really,” Granger replied. “I’ve just separated them into sections, you see, and I’m going through section by section and pulling out anything that looks like it has anything to do with ritual magic…”

“Great,” he heard Weasley mutter darkly. “We don’t even know what we’re looking for…It’s like fourth year all over again…”

“Well,” said Granger bracingly, “It’s not like we haven’t been through it before…”

Potter reached up to grab a book off a high shelf, and his shirt rode up just over the crest of his hip, and Draco’s throat was very, very dry. Surely this was some sort of karmic retribution.

“What are you reading, Draco?” Granger asked, setting a high stack of books on the table beside him and he jolted, praying she hadn’t caught on to him staring at Potter’s midriff.

“Just the Common Bestiary,” he replied quickly, flashing her the cover. Potter peered at it from around the stack.

“A Bestiary? Why?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know, Potter,” he snapped, feeling irrationally angry at Potter and the glorious dip below Potter’s hipbone. “Maybe I’m reading a Bestiary because I’m studying beasts? Magizoology? Under Charlie Weasley. You might remember him from such encounters as the Weasley family’s back garden and the table at breakfast every morning _.”_

“This might come as a shock to you, Malfoy,” Potter shot back, “But it _is_ possible to have a conversation without being an utter twat.”

He slammed his book down on the opposite end of the table.

“Stulte vigilate!” the book yelped in outrage.

“Sorry,” Potter muttered, opening the cover with an apologetic wince.

Draco glowered down at his own text, hating him. He hated his fucking face and his fucking smile and he hated always seeing it from a distance, directed at someone else. He hated that he _wanted_ to look, wanted to touch, wanted…He hated that he wanted.

Potter sighed, shifted in his seat, turned a page, drummed his fingers, cleared his throat, stretched, shifted again.

“Harry! Can you please be still?” said Granger impatiently.

“Sorry,” he said.

Draco let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and Potter glared at him.

“Whatever it is you’re looking for, you’re not likely to find it by staring at me,” he sniffed.

“Staring…at you?” Potter spluttered. “I’d rather look at a basilisk! You were the one over there-”

“Doing what, exactly?” Draco snapped. “Reading quietly to myself? Though it’s hardly surprising you find it offensive. God forbid you suffer through anything so mundane as your own research.”

“I’ve done plenty of-”

“Oh, yes I’m sure you spent years studying Granger’s notes quite diligently.”

“I know how to _read,_ Malfoy.”

“Oh? Good on you, Potter! At least you learned something at Hogwarts besides the three spells in your repertoire-”

“For your information, Malfoy-”

Draco rose, sauntered languidly over to Potter’s chair, and hopped up, perching himself on the table beside Potter, and when he leaned in to pluck the book from Potter’s grasp, he leaned just a little too close, locked eyes for just a little too long, and some awful part of him thrilled at the way the words died on Potter’s lips.

“What do we have here?” he asked. “The _Rites of the Dark Initiates?_ Aren’t you meant to be an Auror? Rather shocking choice of reading material.”

He glanced over at Weasley, expecting some sort of returning barb, but Weasley wasn’t even looking; he and Granger were sharing a long, inscrutable look between them.

“And why is that, Malfoy?” Potter asked, his voice dropping soft and low in a way that shot straight to Draco’s dick.

“I would imagine because it’s illegal. Possession of the _Rites_ carries a three-year sentence in Azkaban, Potter.”

He placed the book down delicately, slid off the table, and strolled, straight-backed, from the room. The moment the door was shut behind him, he practically dived down the stairs, desperate to put physical distance between himself and the timbre of Potter’s voice, still buzzing low in his body.

He stumbled into the first-floor parlor somewhat aimlessly, and was surprised to find Black sitting on the floor in front of the fire with Lovegood, a silver dagger in his wand hand. In a quick, practiced motion, he brought the blade down against his opposite palm, and instantly, a ribbon of red appeared at the surface of the cut.

“What the hell?” he asked loudly.

Both of them started and looked up at him in tandem.

“Hello, Draco,” Lovegood said.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice still too loud. “You just…”

“It’s alright,” said Black. “We’re only having a lesson.”

“Go on, then Luna,” he said, turning back to her.

She cradled his bleeding hand in her lap, glancing at it rather sorrowfully.

“May this be healed,” she said, running her wand down the length of the gash. “May this be healed.”

Draco watched, awestruck, as the split flesh began to knit together before his eyes.

He blinked at her, confused.

“That’s the _Vulnera Sanentur_ spell, but how did you cast it with a different incantation?" he asked.

“Would you like to join us?” Black asked, patting the ground beside him. “We were just about to practice that.”

Draco was torn, repulsed at the idea of sitting on the floor beside a puddle of Black’s drying blood, but curiosity won out, and he crossed his legs and seated himself.

“Watch,” he said, flashing Draco an easy grin.

“Light up!” he said, holding his wand aloft. From the tip of it sprang a bright, white light.

“That’s…how?” Draco asked.

“Let me ask you this,” said Black, extinguishing the light. “Why do you think all our spells are in Latin?”

“I don’t…know?” Draco replied uncertainly. “I’ve never thought about it.”

“Most people don’t,” said Black. “The answer has more to do with war than with magic. Latin came from Rome, and as the Romans colonized Europe, it began to displace native languages. Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian…ever heard of them?”

“No,” Draco admitted, listening raptly.

“That’s because they’re dead, like Latin is now. But people spoke those languages and they managed to do magic just fine. Here’s another question: when we create new spells, why do we develop the incantations in Latin?”

“Because it’s the most powerful verbal medium for channeling magic! Latin is the root of modern language!” said Draco.

“No,” said Black flatly. “That’s Eurocentric rubbish, and it’s wrong. Do you think wizards in China are incanting their spells in Latin? What about in Nigeria, or Cambodia, or Chile?”

“I suppose…not,” said Draco. He looked over at Luna, hoping for confirmation, but she was watching the snow fall outside the parlor window, lost in her own thoughts.

“What do you think is really happening, when you say an incantation?”

“The incantation allows you to channel your magic,” Draco said more confidently- they had learned this in first year.

“Not exactly,” Black replied, smiling wryly at Draco’s expression. “It doesn’t _channel_ magic; it _is_ magic. Language connects the people who speak it. It’s the bond between us, and that bond is very deep and powerful.”

“Sirius?” Luna asked.

“Yes, love?”

“Why do we learn incantations at all? We can do magic nonverbally.”

“Yes, but the incantations do have a purpose. Speaking an incantation aloud affirms your intent. When I say _“Lumos,”_ I’m using that word to represent light, and by speaking the representation aloud, I’m affirming to myself the shape I want my magic to take. But I can do that just as easily by saying “lumière” or “golau” or “light.” When a spell is very familiar to you, you know instinctively what it’s shaped like. You can cast it without saying anything, because you know it from a place inside your own magic. But until you know the magic by heart, you need some sort of incantation.”

Draco sat on the floor with them, listening to Black narrate the story of how Latin spread across the continent, carried in the mouths of soldiers from war to war, and it was rather interesting up until they got back onto the topic of healing spells. Healing was, in Draco's opinion, rather graphic, and he left them to their own devices halfway through a lively conversation about the proper way to treat end-stage gangrene. There were some things he just didn't want to hear.

He roamed the house for a while, poking his head into unused rooms, running his fingers over the banisters, missing Charlie, and his mother, and his friends, and after a while, he decided that he was starting to get a bit pathetic.

And there was really only one cure that he knew of for being pathetic, and that was Pansy.

When he stepped through the Floo into the drawing room in Parkinson Manor, he found Pansy already there, lounging on a chaise sofa in a paper-thin, rather short, silk nightgown, chatting to Theo, who was perched in the chair across from her.

“Well look what just crawled in,” Pansy said, raising an eyebrow at him. “You look pathetic, Draco. Is it Potter? You always get pathetic over Potter.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Pansy; I haven’t seen Potter in days,” he replied, straight-faced, brushing Floo dust off his jeans.

“And what is that you’re wearing?” she asked, arching one elegant brow.

“Muggle clothes.”

“Obviously, Draco, God,” she said. “I meant why are you wearing clothes that clearly belong to a man who isn’t you?”

He looked down and realized he was still wearing Charlie’s old Weasley jumper.

“Theo, our prayers have been answered, darling. He’s stumbled through the Floo at half noon, wearing another man’s clothes. There’s a God above us after all.”

“Oh. No, Pansy. No. This is Charlie’s, I just borrowed it-”

“Oh, that’s brilliant!” Pansy crowed. “A forbidden romance between Master and Apprentice! Oh, Draco I didn’t think you had it in you!”

“No, Pansy-”

“Oh God, it’s true! Have you gotten to the stage where you’re at each other’s throats trying to cover up the sexual tension?”

“Please, Pansy, you’ll put me off my lunch!”

“Well I can’t really blame you, Draco; I never thought I’d hear myself say this about a _Weasley,_ but he is rather fit, isn’t he?”

“Well, you’re…not wrong about that bit, I suppose, but really Pans, I would sooner join a monastery than fuck Charlie, and I’ll thank you to Obliviate me now because the thought of that is going to fuel my nightmares.”

“Alright, Draco, but if it’s not a sordid affair, then _do_ tell me what has you in such a snit.”

“I’m not in a _snit,”_ he grumbled.

“Of course not, darling,” Pansy simpered. “That’s just how your face looks all the time. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you that I’d forgotten.”

Draco ducked his head a bit guiltily at that; he’d meant to come sooner, but he’d gotten tied up in training.

“Everyone’s deserted me for _Weasleys,”_ she sighed dramatically. “Theo’s been to Grimmauld Place for dinner every night this week-”

“To be fair,” Theo cut in mildly, “I was mostly looking for Draco.”

“Who was off with a _Weasley,”_ Pansy cried.

“I wasn’t _off with him,_ I’m his _apprentice-”_

“And don’t think I don’t know about the teas, Theodore. Teas with Granger, three days in a row! While I languished here, alone!”

“There, there, Pansy,” Theo said flatly, reaching across the arm of his chair and patting her bare thigh consolingly.

Draco slid onto the chaise beside her, and she slung her feet into his lap and flicked her wand, summoning a bottle of dark red wine and three glasses, and he sat in companionable silence for a while, rubbing the top of Pansy’s foot absently.

“Oh, by the way, Draco, did I tell you? I’ve joined the Aurory.”

Draco dropped his glass, jumping up as wine went everywhere, and Pansy sat up and sighed.

“Really, Draco? Must you be dramatic?”

“Dramatic?” he spluttered, “Pansy, what on Earth possessed you…you’ve never had a job in your life!”

“Well, yes, and that’s exactly the problem, darling. I’ve been bored.”

“Bored?”

“There’s no use trying to reason with her, Draco. I’ve already tried,” Theo said, looking at her with a tired sort of acceptance.

 _“Bored?”_ he asked again.

“Well, yes, Draco. I’ve done my whole bucket list in the last two years alone. Blaise took me all over Europe. I’ve seen everything. I’m bored.”

“You haven’t seen _everything!_ You could see…the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, or…the caves of Patagonia!”

“There’s beaches and caves here, and I’ve seen them already.”

“You don’t just…sign up to fight dark wizards because you’re _bored!”_

“Oh, God, Draco, you sound like Theo. You’re boring me. This is all very boring.”

“And anyway, you've only applied. It’s not like they’re going to let you in,” Draco said.

“Ha! They already have done. I had the highest entrance exam scores they’ve seen in a century.”

 _“You’re probably also the first Slytherin they’ve seen in a century!”_ Draco cried.

“All the better. Everyone loves a good underdog story.”

“Pansy…why?”

“Oh, I don’t know…when Theo and I had to come rescue you, and we were duelling... It was all _thrilling,_ Draco. I felt so _awake_ and _alive._ I can see why you've taken up with those Gryffindor types, darling. They keep you on your toes.”

“Er…about the rescuing bit,” Draco said, ignoring the barb.

“Oh, don’t worry Draco, I fully intend to keep that strangeness to myself. I’m not going to implicate myself and Theo in whatever illegalities landed you there. And don’t tell me the details, I’m sure I don’t want to know.”

“Right,” he said

He stayed for lunch, then drinks after lunch, then afternoon tea, then dinner, finally making his excuses well after the sun went down, and by the time he made it back to Grimmauld Place, he felt much more like himself, even despite hours of Pansy hounding him about his non-existent sex life.

When he stepped through the fireplace in the parlor, he was surprised to find it deserted, save for Charlie, who was sprawled on his back on a sofa, staring darkly at the ceiling.

“Alright, Charlie,” he said, perching on the arm of the sofa beside Charlie’s head and looking down at him. “What is it? You’ve been out of sorts all week.”

Charlie glowered at him, then sat up and sighed.

“It’s…nothing,” he said. “I did something stupid and now I have to deal with it. That’s all.”

Draco shoved him, and he scooted over, and Draco slid onto the sofa beside him. Had it been Pansy or Blaise or Theo, he would have just needled them mercilessly until they cracked, but Charlie was so seldom in low spirits that he wasn’t quite sure what to say, so he scooted close to him and said nothing. Apparently, this was the right course of action; after several minutes of sitting in silence, Charlie sighed and leaned against him.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked.

“Anything,” said Draco.

“The night we went to get Ron and Harry…when I…”

He was silent for a long time.

“What did she look like? The witch who tried to kill me?” he said finally.

“Uhm…I wasn’t really…very focused,” said Draco. “But…she was rather tall. Thin. Had black hair.”

“Black hair?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, definitely.”

“Were her eyes…blue?”

“No,” said Draco. That much he did remember; he had been staring into them when he killed her.

“No,” he said again, shivering. “They were dark brown. Almost black.”

“Hey,” said Charlie, catching the look on his face. “I’m sorry, I…I shouldn’t have asked you that.”

“It’s alright,” said Draco, leaning in closer to Charlie. “Why did you want to know?”

“Because it…wasn’t her. The witch you’re describing wasn’t…who I saw.”

“Your mentor?” Draco asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yeah.”

“What…happened?”

“I got hit with a spell, and the next thing I knew, there she was,” he said. “It was almost like a fever-dream hex, except without the…disorientation. Everything was perfectly clear, except I was seeing someone who wasn't there.”

“A fever-dream hex…Charlie, whatever you got hit with was not a fever-dream hex. You were completely gone. I was going to look into it, but I couldn't this morning with everyone in the library,” Draco said. “Granger and the rest are researching ritual magic-”

“Oh, hell,” Charlie grumbled. “I’d hoped they’d drop it after we found the boys.”

“Unlikely,” Draco muttered darkly. “Granger’s too smart to know when to drop anything, and Potter’s too stupid.”

Charlie quirked an eyebrow at him, but said nothing.

“Well,” he began again. “That’s going to be a problem. I know they were all in the Order, and they’re war vets and all that, but they’re still civilians, so…”

“We can’t let a bunch of civilians get caught up in necromantic magic,” Draco finished for him.

“Right. And I really don’t want to get the Chief involved unless there’s no other choice. He’s a little too eager with the Obliviate if you ask me, and frankly I don't want him anywhere near my family.”

“What do we do, then?”

“First, we need to take inventory of who knows what. The Aurory knows Ron and Harry disappeared, but how much else do they know? On top of that, my entire family showed up to the ritual site, not to mention your mum and your friends.”

“I’ve already mentioned it to Pansy; she doesn’t know anything and she doesn’t want to. I don’t even need to ask my mother to tell you she’ll feel the same. Theo probably knows more than all of us put together, but that’s true of Theo in most cases.”

“Right, then. We’ll have to keep an eye on what they’re researching. And we should look into what that spell was. Ginny broke it easily enough, but…if I had been alone when I got hit with that…”

Draco squeezed his eyes shut, unwilling to consider it.

“Maybe there’s a way to prevent it, or to fight it off,” Charlie said.

“We’ll find a way,” Draco said, feeling suddenly protective.

Charlie on his knees before that witch…It had been wrong to see him in that position, prostrated before her. Resolve rose up in him at the memory of it. He didn't care _how;_ he only knew that he would never let that happen to Charlie again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	45. Harry Potter and the Time Malfoy Was Up To Something

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man things have been wild lately. I hope everyone's staying safe and healthy, keeping your hands clean and staying inside as much as you can. Hopefully my little story will provide you with a bit of distraction.
> 
> In this chapter, trigger warning for mild description of past polyamorous sexual encounters.

“I just think he’s up to something!” Harry snapped, pulling the toothbrush out of his mouth and speaking around a mouthful of foam.

“Oh, Harry…” Hermione peered at him from around the shower curtain, her bushy hair plastered slick against her neck. There was a bit of shampoo dripping down toward her eye, and she brushed it away impatiently.

“Well he _is!_ You said yourself you don’t believe he’s really studying magizoology!”

“Well…no, I don’t, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s up to something. And Charlie trusts him! Tell him, Ron.”

Ron padded into the bathroom, pulling a jumper on over his freckled shoulders and grabbing his own toothbrush from the cup on top of the vanity.

“Look, ‘Mione,” Harry said, suppressing a flash of irritation, “He’s _up to something._ He’s _tricked_ Charlie into taking him on so he can…”

“So he can what, exactly?” she asked.

“Er…well, I’m still trying to figure that part out,” he admitted, spitting his toothpaste foam into the sink and vanishing it.

“And stop looking at each other like that!” he barked, catching sight of the look of pointed concern Ron and Hermione were sharing.

The steam from the shower had fogged up the mirror, and Harry reached out to draw a tic-tac-toe board with his finger. Ron immediately placed a big ‘X’ in the middle of the board, his finger squeaking against the wet glass.

“Look, maybe I should take the cloak and-”

“Oh, _no,_ Harry, _”_ Hermione said, her tone beseeching. “Not again.”

“What do you mean _again?”_

He put an ‘O’ in the top left corner.

“Two words, mate: sixth year,” Ron said, dropping an ‘X’ immediately below it.

“What does that have to do with…alright, but…that was different!” Harry spluttered. “He _was_ up to something!”

He countered with an ‘O’ in the top right corner, but Ron was no longer looking, distracted by Hermione, who had stepped out of the shower. She was pulling a towel around herself, and Harry wiped his palm across the mirror, erasing their game. Ron’s gaze had turned heavy on her, and he saw a pink flush creeping up her bare chest.

“Well, I’m off! See you at breakfast!” Harry said, seizing the distraction, scrambling from the bathroom, and pulling the door shut before they started using words like ‘obsessed,’ and ‘stalking.’

“Alright, Harry,” came Hermione’s voice through the door, just as Ron said, “We’ll be right down there!”

He hurried out of their room, closed the door, and made his way down the hall bare-chested, with a towel wrapped around his waist, to retrieve clean clothes from his own room.

The bed-sharing was a habit that had started in the Forest of Dean; they had been so scared, and so tired and cold and miserable, that they had stopped bothering with pretending to sleep through the night and piled into one bed, as though they could ward off their nightmares if they could just be touching each other. After the war ended, they’d made a half-hearted effort to return to a normal pattern, but Harry could no longer sleep through the night without someone beside him. More nights than not, he’d wake from a screaming nightmare to find them crawling in beside him, tucking him protectively between them, and finally, they’d given up and just gone back to sleeping together full-time.

He’d been worried, at first, that he was keeping Ron and Hermione from being alone together, but they hardly seemed to mind. Some nights they’d roll over and face each other and Harry would hear the sounds of their hands, sliding over each other’s skin, and he’d slip out and go climb into bed with Ginny, or Luna. Some nights they’d fall straight to sleep, preferring to make their love in the morning, while the house was still sleeping. And there were nights, occasionally, that they’d pulled Harry in with them, Hermione laying back against Harry’s chest so he could wrap his arms around her, palming her breasts, sucking little bruises onto the side of her neck, while Ron sank inside her, both of them kissing each other and kissing Harry, until they couldn’t keep track of whose hands were whose, or where one body ended and another began.

The first few times it happened, he’d woken up feeling vaguely ashamed, but he was quickly disabused of the notion by Luna, who pointed out bluntly that Ginny did it with Dean, and with Neville, and with Dean and Neville together, and that she did it with Dean and Neville together, and occasionally with Dean and Neville separately, and she did it with Ginny rather a lot and that Harry was more than welcome to join them if he wanted, so he did that a few times, too.

They carried on that way the whole first year of living in Grimmauld Place, and he spent so much time in bed with his friends that he began to wonder if it was unhealthy. It wasn’t long after that they discovered the sex magic; it spread like a cloud throughout the house every time Sirius and Remus went to bed together, and it was ultimately Hermione who put two and two together and started warding the two of them inside their room at night.

After the sex magic was contained, they all but stopped with the group sex, but the bed-sharing carried right on. So, he spent his nights asleep between Ron and Hermione, and his mornings carefully avoiding that entire floor of the house, not because he felt unwelcome, but because the two of them were meant to be married soon, and he wanted them to have plenty of time alone together. An unexpected outcome of their threesomes was discovering that he was rather more interested in Ron than Ginny, or Luna, or Hermione. While Ron had absolutely no interest in blokes at all, with Harry being a tentative exception, Harry found he rather enjoyed sex with other men, and thus a disastrous attempt at dating outside his friend group was born.

Dating within the Wizarding world was right out, Harry decided; he had enough trouble keeping himself out of the press without outing himself to all of Wizarding Britain. So, he embarked on a series of ill-fated trysts with muggle blokes. But after one too many encounters with the Statute of Secrecy, Kingsley’s disappointment, and a heavy-handed Obliviate charm, he finally swore off dating entirely. He mostly wanked these days, though he would still occasionally sleep with Luna because she was a total Domme and she’d give him a peg up his arse if he asked nicely, and there was something shockingly erotic about that.

Ron and Hermione weren’t going to be down for hours, never mind what they said about breakfast, and most mornings Harry took the opportunity to go train with Sirius and Ginny and sometimes Remus and Luna, so he threw on some sweats and muggle trainers and made his way down to the kitchen to see if he could catch them.

Instead of Sirius, he found Charlie with Malfoy, huddled in conversation. He eased back out of sight and listened.

“I want to start working with you on weapons,” he heard Charlie say. “I’d been using a bow proficiently for a while before I found the Archer, so I was ready physically when he came to me. There’s no way of knowing which Form you’ll find first, but the bow takes the longest to master, so we’ll start with that.”

“Alright, but where am I supposed to get a _bow and arrows?_ ”

“You’ll be using mine. I’ll show you how to string it and how to make the arrows.”

“I can’t take your-”

“It’s not like I have a need for it anymore. Let’s focus on archery basics today, then when we get back, we’ll have a look into that spell. I haven’t got a clue what it was, so we’ll be starting from the drawing board.”

Harry watched them disapparate, feeling firmly confused by the entire content of their conversation. Archery? What was all that about? And _Malfoy was up to something, dammit,_ but there was no way Charlie would allow him to get away with it if it was dark or illegal, which meant he had to be doing it behind Charlie’s back, and Harry had to find out what it was.

It was a familiar itch. He couldn’t remember a time since he’d met the boy, at eleven years old, that he hadn’t felt it. There was something _about him,_ and Harry wanted to know what it was. It was the way he walked, carrying the elegant lines of his body with a grace that was at odds with the pompous nonsense that came spewing out of his mouth. It was the way his grey eyes could be so cold in one moment and absolutely _burning_ the next. It was the way people turned and looked on impulse when he walked into rooms. Malfoy was an entitled little _dick,_ but there was something _about him,_ and Harry couldn’t help it. He wanted to know what it was.

He couldn’t exactly follow him now, since he didn’t know where Charlie had taken him, but they’d be back eventually. He fingered the cloak in his pocket and fervently ignored the Hermione-sounding voice in his head that was telling him he was being obsessive.

He shook himself out of his reverie, and apparated to the Forest. Morning training would help his get his head together. It took him only a few minutes to find Sirius, Ginny and Luna sitting in the snow at the mouth of the forest and stretching. He flopped down beside Sirius and grabbed his toes, leaning into the stretch.

“Oh, hey Harry!” said Sirius. “Ron’s not with you?”

“Nah, he and Hermione were…uh. Yeah.”

“Oh, right,” he replied with a grin.

“Remus still asleep?”

“Yeah. Moon’s tonight.”

The moon. He’d forgotten, he realized a bit guiltily.

They started morning training with a run, Sirius and Ginny at their own madcap pace, and Harry falling back to run with Luna. She smiled over at him, and they settled into a comfortable rhythm, following the old wolf-paths that Remus and Sirius had run during childhood. His breathing began to even out, and his mind drifted, worrying about Remus, wondering about Malfoy, turning over the frankly alarming number of cases that had landed on his and Ron’s desks as soon as they got back to the office. They knocked out their free body weight exercises in the snow, and the shock of the cold beneath his palms and feet and the chill of his sweat against his skin was just uncomfortable enough to make him feel awake. By the time they apparated back to Grimmauld Place, the heavy energy that had coursed through him at the sight of Malfoy had been replaced by something lighter. Ron and Hermione were down and had already started on breakfast, helped along by Kreacher, and the smell of hot sausage frying drove all thoughts of Malfoy from his mind.

Remus was sitting in a pile, halfway on his chair, halfway on the table, and Luna took one look at him and tipped a shot of strengthening solution into his coffee cup.

“I’m alright, Luna, really,” he told her.

“I know,” she replied.

Harry cracked an egg and dropped it into a mixing bowl. Neville padded in, still in his nightgown with his hair sticking up, and Luna poured him a cup of coffee and set it in front of him wordlessly. He cracked another egg.

Ginny had pulled Sirius over to the side, talking quietly into his ear, and it wasn’t that he meant to eavesdrop; it was just that he had spent so many years gleaning scraps of information from hushed conversations that ‘constant vigilance’ had become an impulse he couldn’t turn off.

“…hasn’t been by in days! I’m going to get him!”

“Why don’t you cut him a break, Gin? Snape is…not exactly a social creature. He’ll come by if he feels like it.”

“You’ve been saying that all week! I don’t feel right about it, Sirius. When he left out of here, it was the middle of the night, and he all but ran out the door like something was after him.”

“Alright. Why don’t I go check on him? If he’s alright, he’ll throw me out on my arse and we’ll know he’s just been busy at the shop.”

“Fine,” Ginny said, crossing her arms.

Harry turned back to his eggs crossly. He and Ron had only been gone a month and came back to find Draco Malfoy living in their house and _Severus fucking Snape_ edging him out for "best friend" status _._ It wasn’t that he hated Snape; he’d seen the memories. He understood why Snape had done what he had done. But he certainly didn’t _like_ him. Of all the people for Ginny to go and _adopt…_

 _You mean like she adopted you?_ he thought, feeling a bit guilty.

He peered over at her; she was watching Sirius disapparate with her arms still crossed.

Then she settled herself beside him, passing him a whisk and setting about slicing mushrooms, leaning her hip into his hip, smiling her pretty, freckled smile, and he thought, contritely, that she could adopt every cantankerous misanthrope in Britain, and he would make eggs for the lot of them if it made her happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	46. Severus Snape and the Walls He Lived Behind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh my heart right now.
> 
> TW: Mention of sexual content

He’d woken, face down on his bare mattress, every muscle in his body tense, his cock so hard a tremor ran through him. He rolled onto his side and curled into a ball, trying to force himself to relax. The whole of last week had been like this, images of Charlie playing on a loop in his mind, his dick swollen, skin prickling, unable to settle.

He’d tried bringing himself off, but it only drew it out, keeping him hovering near the edge of an orgasm but just not quite able to give himself relief.

He raked his hand across his face, sighing in frustration. He hadn’t had a sex drive in years. Surely it would work itself out of his system, if only he could keep busy enough to _just stop thinking about him._ Only he’d filled every order in his backlog and brewed all his standing orders for the next three weeks out. There was nothing left to do. But going mad staring at the wall of his empty shop seemed better than going mad staring at the walls of Spinner’s End, so he rose and dressed himself, buttoning his robes up to his throat, pulling on a heavy winter cloak, and disapparating.

He felt the hole in his wards the moment he stepped through his shop door. He pulled out his wand, disillusioning himself, and crept behind the counter, through the door into the back lab.

“You can drop the charm, Snape, I know you’re there.”

Black was lounging in a chair, tilting it back on two legs and propping his muddy boots up on top of Severus’ clean benchtop. He whipped around suddenly, sitting backwards in the chair.

“Black,” he said, taking a deep breath and pushing his mounting frustration into a far corner of his mind. “Why are you in my shop?”

“Not going to hex me, then?” Black said, raising an eyebrow.

“I had hoped we were past such trivialities, Black,” he said tiredly.

“Damn. Ginny was right,” Black muttered, pushing his chair back and walking around it.

The next thing he knew, Black was about a centimeter from his face, peering into his ear canal with a lighted wand.

“What in the _seven hells_ are you-”

“Oh, don’t be cross, Severus,” Black said impatiently. “It’s just a post-discharge checkup. Open your mouth and say ‘AHHH’ for me.”

“Damn it Black!”

He tried to back away, but Black grabbed him by the jaw, pulled his head down, and aimed his wandlight directly into Severus’ eyes.

“This is wholly unnecessary!” he yelped, squirming away and blinking at the spots of light still flashing in his vision. “If I needed a Healer, I would have gone to a competent one at St. Mungo’s!”

“Your blood pressure is low,” Black said, ignoring him. “Blood sugar is low too. Acutely dehydrated.”

He reached down beside his chair, grabbed a Tesco bag, and pulled out three large bottles of Lucozade and several tins of soup.

“You haven’t been looking after yourself,” he said, shooting Severus an accusatory glare. “What’s the matter? If you’re ill, you can apparate straight into Grimmauld, you’ve been keyed to the wards since the Order was in session-”

“Why?” Severus demanded, cutting him off. “Why are you here? With…with _soup_? It isn’t any of your business whether I eat, or whether I’m _hydrated!_ None of this is your concern!” he said, his voice raising, slightly hysterical. “Why are you here, Black? What do you want?”

Black sighed, flipping his chair around and sitting in it properly. He stretched his arms up and behind his head, and levelled Severus with a long, considering look.

“It’s just us now,” he said finally. “You and me and Remus. The war took our whole generation. It took James, Lily, the Prewett boys, Benjy and Mary, Marlene, Dorcas, Doc Dearborn, Frank and Alice… How many of your housemates are left? How many Slytherins? None? They all went the same way my baby brother did, yeah?”

Severus stared at him, mouth hanging open, silent.

“We are all we have left, Severus,” Black said tiredly. “Eat your soup. And I’m giving you fair warning; Ginny’s all in a snit that you haven’t been ‘round, and I can only keep her at bay for so long. You should come by for dinner.”

“Alright,” Severus said, feeling lost.

“Good,” said Black. “Until then.”

He turned and disapparated, leaving Severus standing with an armful of soup cans. He looked down at them in bewilderment, but they didn’t seem to have any more answers than he did.

For lack of anything better to do, Severus opened up a can of chicken noodle, warming it with a charm and eating it straight out of the can, and downed an entire bottle of Lucozade, and after he’d eaten, he realized that, annoyingly, Black had been right. The food made him feel almost human again. He warmed up another can and choked it down for good measure, focusing, for the first time since he’d fled from Grimmauld in the night, on the situation at hand.

First and foremost, he had an obligation to see his research through. He’d technically completed his assignment; Potter and Weasley were home in one piece. But the possibility that there were necromancers running about was…disconcerting. He’d put in for a copy of both Potter and Weasley’s Auror reports, but it was obvious that they had been less than forthcoming, and that posed an additional question: what would two Aurors want to keep from the Aurory, and more importantly, why? He was at a dead standstill until he could interview one or both of them, and that meant he would have to go back to Grimmauld Place.

Secondly, he could no longer hide away in his shop, pretending that nothing had happened between he and Charlie. The way Charlie had touched him…he’d been compelled by Black and Lupin’s magic. For a moment a bitter anger rose up in him; if they hadn’t been so irresponsible, if they had kept their awful, degenerate magic in their own room with them…

 _No,_ he stopped himself. _This is your own fault. You did this. Not Black and Lupin._

He buried his head in his hands, fighting back a wave of nausea and imagining the shock and disgust that Charlie must have felt. Charlie deserved better than him disappearing in the night. He had to face Charlie and apologize. He owed him that.

He felt a bit calmer, having come to a conclusion, and he apparated back to Spinner’s End to dig through his own considerable library until dinner time. He would pay one more visit, collect his information, make his apologies and leave; he had no right to linger in Charlie’s life and Charlie’s home after what he’d done. It was strange, but it felt like a chapter of his life was closing. Charlie, Black, the rest of the Gryffindors…he’d known them all for most of their lives, but he’d only _really_ known them for the past month or so. And that was all it had taken for him to grow…fond. It was an unfamiliar feeling. He was accustomed to apathy, hatred, occasionally a burning, hellbent love. But when he thought of their motley bunch, Ginny pouring coffee into Longbottom’s mouth, Granger having maths class at the foot of his bed, Dean Thomas chattering relentlessly about every paperback novel he ever read, Black and his refusal to wear proper clothes…he felt, for perhaps the first time he could remember, a gentle sort of fondness; a fondness that didn’t hurt, or keep him awake at night, or make him sick. He would miss them, he realized. The thought took him by surprise. He would miss them.

He stepped through the parlor fireplace well after dinner, hoping to find Charlie. Instead, he found Draco looking on in terror as Potter tossed a tennis ball down three flights of stairs and a werewolf came bounding after it.

“Your turn Padfoot,” cried Weasley, chucking another ball down the long hallway past the portrait of Lady Black, and covering his ears as a great black dog went tearing to fetch it, sending the late mistress into a fit of shrieking.

Another ball went flying, followed by a massive, grey-brown streak.

“Give me my ball back, Moony, no fair!” cried Dean Thomas, sticking his hand in- _oh God, he’s sticking his hand in the werewolf’s mouth-_ and trying to tug the ball free.

There was a crash, and more wailing from Lady Black, and he saw Longbottom running with dog-Black scrambling after him. He reached the top of the stairs and tossed the ball down, and dog-Black and the wolf went after it at once, crashing headfirst into each other and toppling over.

“Collision!” cried Thomas. “That was a collision! That’s another ten points, Nev!”

As he stared out at the scene before him, Ginny Weasley caught his eye and marched over.

“There you are!” she said, glaring up at him. “Where’ve you been all week?”

“Spare me, Miss Weasley,” he said, answering her glare. “I’ve already been prodded indecently by one member of this madhouse today.”

“Alright then. _How_ have you been?” she asked.

“I have been…” he broke off the sentence, feeling a bit choked. Occluding, he flattened out his expression.

“Fine, Miss Weasley,” he said. “I have been fine.”

“Good,” she said. “I was worried about you.”

She was looking up at him with the fierce look on her face; the look that Charlie had called _protective,_ and there it was again…a soft sort of fondness.

But before he could ruminate on the feeling, a ball whizzed passed his head, and he scrambled to the side to avoid being bowled over flat by a werewolf.

“What in the actual hell?” he barked.

“We’re playing Indoor Ball,” Ginny said, grinning. “We only play it on the full moon.”

“Indoor ball,” he muttered, shaking his head.

And then, all of his higher cognitive processes stopped, because there was Charlie, running down the stairs with a tennis ball held high over his head and Black barking and nipping at his heels, and his smile was bright and open and he had not been prepared for it; Charlie with that smile on his face hit him like a stunner to the chest. Charlie tossed the ball, and Black took off after it, and Lady Black screamed, and Ginny laughed hysterically beside him, but the chaos around him may as well have ceased to exist.

Charlie turned and caught sight of him and the smile fell from his face. Where Severus was walled off and blank, Charlie was just…vulnerable. Hurt. Severus had done that. He’d hurt him.

“Charlie,” he said, before he gave himself the chance to falter. “May I have a word?”

“I guess we ought to talk, yeah?” Charlie replied sadly.

Severus followed him down the hall, dodging a tennis ball that ricocheted suspiciously close to Lady Black’s portrait and leaping aside just in time to avoid a furry collision.

When they emerged into the back garden, Severus’ ears were ringing. He could hear the sound of Black barking at his mother’s portrait through the closed door, and for a moment, Charlie smiled wryly, but it fell as soon as he looked Severus in the eyes.

“Can I ask…what happened?” Charlie said, breaking the silence first.

_What…happened? He was so confused that he couldn’t even remember…?_

He felt a twist of guilt; he was going to have to make Charlie relive it.

“I’m…Charlie I’m sorry, but this might be distressing to hear,” he began. “What I did to you was unforgivable. I shall understand if you’re angry.”

Charlie cocked his head to the side and watched him for a moment.

“I never meant to…” he trailed off, trying to find a way to phrase it without hurting Charlie.

“Never meant to what, Severus? I woke up and you were gone.”

“What…is that really what you’re…what?” he babbled.

“I feel like I’m missing something here…” Charlie said, cocking his head again.

“I…Charlie, the night that you…that we…”

“Slept together?”

“Yes! I didn’t know…I had no idea you were under a compulsion. If I had known, I never would have let you-”

“A what? Severus, what are you talking about?”

“Sex magic!” he cried, wincing at the volume of his own voice. “Black and Lupin…your sister said that their sex magic had spilled over the wards. You were under a compulsion, Charlie, and I let you…”

“Sex magic? Black and Lupin…oh, she’s having you on, Severus. You don’t think she really wards them in at night, she just likes to make fun…”

“I can assure you; there was no joke. Their magic was all over the house. And I swear, Charlie, I didn’t know. I would never have allowed that to happen had I known you weren’t acting of your own will. Charlie, all I can say to you is that I am truly sorry.”

Charlie blinked at him.

“You think I…didn’t want…”

Charlie sucked in a breath and stepped toward him, crowding into his space.

“You think I didn’t want you like that?” he asked, his voice going hard-edged and quiet, so close to his ear that he could feel the whisper of Charlie’s breath. “I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to do, Severus.”

He jerked himself back suddenly, and the loss of his closeness left Severus feeling cold.

“But…oh, God! Severus…were _you_ under a compulsion? Is that why you left without saying anything?”

His eyes were wide, and the abrupt shift in his mood left Severus struggling to keep up, and he was silent for a moment too long; Charlie had paled, and was looking at him with an expression of muted horror.

“No!” Severus exclaimed, finally realizing what Charlie was saying. “No! I left because…well, because I’m oblivious, apparently.”

Charlie huffed a little laugh and smiled. He was standing close again. Severus felt a flush rising up his chest.

“Charlie,” Severus said hoarsely. “Why?”

“Why what?” he replied.

“Oh, don’t be obtuse, certainly you’re aware…”

He raised a coppery eyebrow and frowned.

“Charlie, you…could throw a rock and hit someone better suited…you’re…”

“Better suited?” Charlie asked.

“Yes. Better suited. Younger. More attractive. Someone who wasn’t a…you know what I am.”

“Yeah, but I don’t actually,” Charlie said. “I don’t, but I’d like to.”

“You’d like to…what?”

“Know you,” Charlie replied.

“Charlie,” Severus replied, “I can assure you…there is nothing worth knowing.”

Charlie reached out as though to touch him, then stopped, his hand hanging in midair.

“I’d like to know you, Severus, but not unless you want me to,” he said.

The words felt heavy in the air, and Severus had the unsteady feeling of standing in a high place and looking down. It would be so easy to reach out and catch the man’s hand in his own, a matter of centimeters, if he could only make his limbs respond.

But Charlie didn’t know what he was asking for, and that thought stayed his hands. Severus knew himself; he was wretched at best, depraved at worst. Twisted and possessive and _wrong._ He and Charlie…they were from different worlds. No; he couldn’t allow it.

“Charlie,” he said. “I will not drag you down into what I am.”

“Alright,” Charlie said, smiling sadly. “I…can’t say I’m not disappointed, but I won’t try to insert myself in your life if that’s not something you want.”

Charlie’s hands, running up and down his chest and the insides of his thighs, Charlie’s hand, maddeningly slow around his dick, Charlie pulling him against his chest…he wanted that all back. He wanted and wanted and he’s ruined, he realizes. He’s completely and utterly fucked. Charlie stepped away, and for a wild moment he’s seized by the urge to grab the man and pull him back. He folded his hands behind his back, grabbing one in the other, unable to trust them.

“Why don’t we go back in?” Charlie said, fixing a blank sort of look on him. “It’s cold out.”

Charlie turned as though in slow motion.

_Don’t make me watch this,_ he thought desperately.

But he did watch it; Charlie’s shoulder was the same kind of cold as his empty shop and his empty house.

 _You did it to yourself,_ he told himself nastily. _You got what you wanted, and you’re still not fucking happy._

He forced himself to watch the hard lines of Charlie’s back as he walked away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	47. Charlie Weasley and the Sister Who Knew Everything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Hermione and Luna are absolute diamonds, and Ron Weasley is a lowkey badass.
> 
> Trigger warnings: Graphic description of violence, blood, gore.

He didn’t look over his shoulder to see whether Severus had followed him back inside. He just made his way through the kitchen, back down the hall, ducking through a minefield of broken chairs and overturned tables, dodging Moony and Padfoot, narrowly avoiding a flying tennis ball that came a bit too close to his head.

He’d been ready and willing to join their game earlier, but now the level of enthusiasm grated at him. He slipped into the parlor and closed the door behind him, only to find that Ginny and Draco must have had the same idea. They’d stoked the fire and put on a record; it was one that Charlie had never heard before, upbeat and brassy and entirely contrary to his mood, but Draco was staring at the spinning record with a little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and Charlie didn’t have the heart to ask him to turn it off.

“How’d it go, then?” Ginny asked.

“How did what go?”

“Don’t play dumb, Charlie. You were out there talking to Snape.”

Draco’s head came up suddenly, silent but clearly listening.

_Damn it, Ginny._

“It was nothing…we were just talking about his research.”

“Oh, come on, Charlie, I’m not stupid. You’ve been moping around since he went tearing out of here in the middle of the night, and the second you laid eyes on him, you got that kicked puppy look on your face.”

“I… that’s not-”

“It’s alright, Charlie. You’re allowed to have feelings for him, you know. He’s really not so bad, if you can ignore the minimum of three insults in every sentence he says aloud. And the fact that he only has two facial expressions. And the way he looks like he’s contemplating murdering all of us-”

“Alright, Ginny, I get it!” he barked. “And who said I have _feelings_ for him? Can’t I just enjoy chatting with him sometimes?”

Ginny pursed her lips, quirked one eyebrow, and shot him a flat look.

“Fine,” he said in defeat. “Maybe I do.”

“Not that it matters,” he added a bit bitterly.

“Oh. He shot you down then?”

“Do you have to be so blunt, Gin?”

“Well…I mean, that’s what happened, right? You’ve got this sort of hangdog look about you that screams ‘jilted lover.’”

“Oh my God, I am _not_ his _jilted lover,_ Ginny! Where do you even come up with this stuff? We just…I told him I wanted to get to know him, and he said ‘no.’ That’s all there is to it.”

“So what are you going to do about it?” she asked.

“What do you mean ‘do about it?’ I’m not going to do anything.”

“You’re just going to give up, then?”

“Give up? It’s not a game to be won, Ginny. He said ‘no.’ I’m certainly not going to inflict myself on him if he doesn’t want it.”

“Are you sad about it?”

“Well, yes, I suppose, but I asked, and he was honest with me, and I have to respect that. He’s still my friend, regardless of how else I may feel about him.

A sad sort of expression flashed across her face, but he didn’t get the chance to ask about it because at that moment, the Floo sprang open, and Dora Tonks staggered through it.

“LONGBOTTOM!!” she bellowed. “POTTER! WEASLEY! LONGBOTTOM!”

“Dora,” he said. “What is it?”

“Not now, Charlie! There’s been an attack!”

The parlor door burst open, and Harry flailed through it, followed by Neville, who tripped over him and pulled him to the ground. No sooner were they back on their feet than Ron dived through the door, crashing into them and sending them both back to the ground.

“GET OFF YOUR ASSES!” she shouted. “We need all hands on deck; there’s been another attack.”

“What?” said Harry, scrambling back to his feet. “Where? What’s happened.”

“Another werewolf attack. We believed they were coordinating with the Death Eaters, and now we have our proof. Two more abductions, and they’ve surrounded the Finnegans’ family home.”

“ _Our_ Finnegan?! Seamus? Is his family alright?” Harry demanded.

“As of now, they haven’t been able to breach the perimeter of the home. To make matters worse, they’ve split up. I got a patronus on the way here that the Boneses and the MacMillans are both under attack, and they’re running wild in Diagon Alley. They’re trying to divide us.”

“How do you want us stationed?” Ron asked.

“I’ve got Donohue, Brown, and Creevey in Diagon now. I sent Finnegan to his home, and he’s going to have to hold down the fort there. Potter and Weasley, you’ll have to split up. Potter, take the MacMillans; Weasley you’ve got the Boneses. Longbottom, you’re with me; we’re going to Diagon.”

Harry and Ron shared an uncertain look, clearly unhappy at the idea of being separated, and Charlie resolved that the second Dora was out of sight, he was going after his brother. Their ranks were spread too thin; he shuddered to think of his little brother facing down werewolves alone.

“Remember,” said Dora.

“Constant vigilance!” Ron said, cutting her off.

“Constant vigilance,” Harry echoed.

Then they twisted out of existence.

“Ready, Longbottom?” Dora asked.

“Ready,” he replied.

“Longbottom…constant vigilance!”

“Constant vigilance,” Longbottom said, nodding his head once and disapparating.

Dora looked up, her narrowed eyes sweeping the whole of the Grimmauld household, who had all come running at the sound of her bellowing.

“Look. I know you all are just chomping at the bit to take off after the boys, but I need you guys to stay out of this. You’re all civilians. Last time I had to call Kingsley in _from the fucking Situation Room_ to keep Remus out of Azkaban. Stay. In. This. House.”

She turned and disapparated.

There was a beat of silence, then Ginny piped up.

“We’re not actually going to sit around here while they go off and fight Death Eaters and werewolves outnumbered, right?”

“Obviously not,” Dean said. “I’m going to the Finnegans.’ Shay needs me.”

And in another instant, he was gone.

“Charlie,” Ginny said. “Don’t waste your breath trying to tell me to stay behind because I’m not going to. If you go after Ronnie, I’ll go after Harry.”

“Fine,” said Charlie reluctantly. He didn’t want her out there, but it was obvious she wasn’t going to listen. “Draco, are you coming with?”

“You know I am.”

“Alright, then,” Luna piped up. “I’ll go with Ginny.”

“Luna, I need you to stay,” Sirius began.

“It’s not going to do any good,” Luna said. “Last time I tried to keep him here, he jumped through a closed window and went running off into the night trying to get to you. By the time I caught up to him and apparated us, I’d had to Obliviate half the muggles in London. You’re staying this time, Sirius.”

“Alright, then,” Sirius muttered tightly.

Severus stepped in from the hallway, glaring darkly at Draco, who was avoiding his eye.

“Professor Snape?” Hermione asked. “Are you going with Draco?”

“It appears that I am,” he replied.

“Alright, then. I’ll go with Ginny and Luna.”

“Is no one else going with Dean?” asked Charlie.

“No need,” Ginny replied. “Attacking a house full of Finnegans is about as dumb as attacking a house full of Weasleys. If you’d ever met Mrs. Finnegan, you’d understand…I almost feel sorry for the Death Eaters.”

“She isn’t joking,” said Hermione solemnly. “Now…has anyone been to the MacMillans’? I don’t know where to apparate to.”

“I’ve been there,” Luna said conversationally. “Ernie and I dated for a while, so I was over rather often.”

“That’s great Luna,” Hermione replied impatiently. “Can you apparate us?”

With that, Luna held out her hands and they all twisted away together.

“Draco, do you know the Boneses by any chance?” Charlie asked.

“Only in passing, and not where they live.”

“They’re connected to the Floo,” Sirius cut in. He was holding Remus by the scruff of the neck, trying to throw a leg over him to keep him still. “Stop it, Moony, you know you can’t go out there…Suzie comes by for tea occasionally. You can Floo straight there. Ask for Bones Estate.”

“Right,” Charlie replied, stepping up and throwing his pinch of dust into the flames. “Bones Estate!”

And then he fell until he felt stone beneath his feet.

The Bones’ parlor felt eerily still as the three of them stepped out of the Floo. As soon as the Floo flames died, the greenish illumination vanished, plunging the room back into blackness. Charlie blinked, letting his eyes adjust. The door was hanging ajar; he stepped through it into what could have passed for a warzone. What had once been a handsome oak staircase had been blasted away, leaving the tops stairs dangling aimlessly in midair. The gilded frame of a large mirror lay on the floor, crying softly to itself, shards of mirror glass glittering sharply in the dark. The walls were scorched, still smoking in places. On the floor in the center of the hall was a mass of charred flesh and fur. When he squinted into the gloom, he saw a second lump, and then a third. A muted horror soured in his gut at the sight of them; beastly figures, trapped, resting for eternity, in bodies that didn’t belong to them. Behind him, Draco gasped and moved closer to Charlie. Beside them, Severus walked with his back straight and his eyes directly ahead. They followed the path of destruction through a large, formal dining room; the long oak table had been flipped on its side, and Charlie could see the burn-marks marring the underside of it. Across the room, a massive hole had been blasted through the far wall, and further inspection revealed that the door between the dining room and kitchen was spelled shut. Judging by the charring about the walls and floor, it looked as though someone had been trapped in the room while it burned; the hole in the wall must have been used as a point of escape.

“Severus?” Charlie whispered. “It looks like someone blew the house apart to get out of here. What do you make of it?”

“I can see two possibilities,” Severus replied, scanning the room, his dark eyes glittering appraisingly. “Either the Death Eaters blew a hole in the wall to gain entry after dismantling the outer wards, or they locked their victims inside, and they were forced to blast their way out.”

“Or,” Charlie amended, “maybe the victims weren’t the ones locked inside.”

Severus furrowed his brow, considering.

“That makes more sense,” Draco piped up. “Think about it; the Boneses are an old family, and this is their ancestral home. Even if the outer wards were breached, the blood wards would never allow a member of the bloodline to be locked inside their own home; the doors would just keep unlocking themselves, or the windows would vanish, or something. It seems more likely that the victims tried to cut through the dining room into the kitchen, and when the perpetrators pursued them, the wards took the opportunity to lock them in.”

“Good thinking, Draco,” said Charlie, pleased with his deduction. “So, the wards locked our perps in, and they had to blow half the wall apart to get out. Which means there’s a good chance the Boneses are alive.”

Charlie considered the side door; it likely led to a kitchen, and most kitchens had outside access. If they’d made it through that door before it sealed itself, they might still be in there. Convincing the manor’s blood wards to allow them through the door would take time they didn’t have, however; he still hadn’t seen any sign of Ron, and that was making him nervous.

It turned out to be a moot point; as they stood and considered the sealed door, a tremor strong enough to shake the foundation of the house tore through the earth, nearly knocking them to the ground. Through the dining room’s large, bay windows, Charlie could see the flashes of spell-light illuminating the sky.

“I guess that solves that,” he said wryly, jumping through the hole in the wall at a run. He sprinted across the estate’s sprawling lawn, Draco beside him and Severus just behind. The spell-lights were coming from behind a thick, manicured hedge standing higher than Charlie’s head, and he blasted his way through it, forfeiting any element of surprise they might have managed by flanking the hedge and sneaking in under disillusionment.

The sight on the other side brought him to a screeching halt. In the center of the lawn behind the hedge, the earth had been cleared of snow, and in the dirt was a massive circle painted in ash and blood. In the center of the circle, rising vertically up from the earth, was a portal, shimmering with an oily blackness. Three bodies hovered in the air before it; long and tar-like tendrils had emerged from the portal and wrapped around the bodies, trying to drag them in. And there, on the opposite side, was Ron. He had wound the greyish ropes of the _Incarcerous_ charm around the bodies and was pulling them back; both feet were planted, digging into the ground, both hands gripping his wand. Charlie staggered forward, close enough to see Ron’s expression. The girl closest to him had tears streaming down her face. He could see Ron’s legs shaking, trying to hold onto his narrow leverage. There was blood pouring from his nose.

“Ron! Don’t let go…please don’t let go,” he heard the girl sob.

He saw Ron’s teeth clench, saw his face go hard and his mouth twist in determination; he saw the very instant that Ron hardened his resolve.

“Don’t worry,” he heard his brother say. “I’ve got you.”

His magic alone couldn’t match the portal’s power, sucking its hostages closer; he was holding the spell together with sheer willpower. Charlie could see little cracks appearing along the ropes, branching out like fault lines. Still, Ron held the spell.

“The circle,” Severus hissed. “Break the circle.”

“Right,” he said.

The three of them surged forward, and the second their jets of _Aguamenti_ hit the ash and blood, the ritual was broken. The black portal fell, and in its place appeared-

“Fuck,” Charlie said. “Draco, get back.”

He pushed Draco behind him. It was fucking Bellanova.

The man was curled up in the dirt, his wand clenched in his fist. He shook his head, then staggered to his feet, swaying slightly before righting himself.

“Fuck you, Bellanova,” Charlie said.

He felt his bow twisting at the confines of its binding; it wanted to be in his hands. He wanted it to be in his hands. But he couldn’t risk open combat with Draco and Ron, who was probably half-dead from exhaustion, so close. Not to mention those civilians. Snape, he assumed, could look after himself, but the rest of them would be defenseless against Bellanova’s arcane magic, and he couldn’t put them in the crossfire.

“I should have known,” Bellanova said drily, in his thick accent. “Always it is you. I did not want to kill you in front of little girl before, but I see now that was mistake.”

“You gonna kill me now, then?” Charlie asked, white-hot anger twisting his face into a mockery of a smile. “Cause it looks like you can hardly hold yourself up, Bellanova. What do you think you’re going to do to me in that state?”

Bellanova grinned wildly, and his wand whipped up faster than Charlie could follow. A jet of sick, yellow light barreled toward him, but just before it struck him, it twisted to the side, hitting Severus square in the chest. Charlie barely had time to blink, and Bellanova was gone.

“Shit,” Charlie said. “Severus?”

It was unmistakably the same bastardized fever-dream spell, but where it had hit him on a delay, Severus had been affected immediately. He slumped to the ground, completely lax.

 _“Finite Incantatem,”_ Charlie barked. But Severus remained immobile.

“Is he alright?” Ron asked, staggering over.

“I don’t know,” Charlie replied.

He cast several diagnostic charms, but other than a slightly elevated heart rate, his vitals were stable.

“Draco? He’s stable enough to apparate. I need you to apparate him back to Sirius.”

“I can’t apparate into Grimmauld,” Draco replied. “I’m still not keyed to the wards!”

“Yeah you are,” said Charlie. “Ginny keyed you ages ago. She just made out like she hadn’t ‘cause she reckons it’s cute that you have to hold my hand every time you want to apparate out.”

Draco fixed him with a flat look.

“You couldn’t have mentioned that?”

“Well…I thought it was sort of cute too,” Charlie said with a shrug. “Just get him to Sirius, OK?”

“Alright,” Draco replied crisply. “But then I’m coming straight back here.”

And with that, he grabbed Severus and they disappeared.

“Is he going to be OK?” Ron asked again.

“He’ll be fine, Ron. Sirius will sort him out.”

He took one look at Ron, shaking with the strain of holding himself upright, and wrapped him in a tight hug. Across the lawn, the three figures were clinging to each other limply. He could hear one of them crying.

“I love you,” he told Ron. “And I am so fucking proud of you. But I want you to promise me something. If you see that man again, I need you to get the fuck out of there. Don’t try to duel him. Don’t try to take him into custody. Don’t engage. Just get the fuck away from him.”

“You know I can’t do that, Charlie,” Ron murmured tiredly. “He’s a Dark Wizard. I’m an Auror. I can’t just run away.”

“Ronald. That man is Voldemort himself.”

Ron shivered against him.

“Who is he?”

“It’s a long story,” Charlie replied. “And it doesn’t matter because I am going to kill him. Myself. Personally. I’m going to find that motherfucker and kill him.”

Ron coughed a bit, and he realized he was squeezing him.

“I love you,” he said again.

Ron buried his head against his shoulder.

“I love you too, dummy,” Ron muttered softly into his shirt.

When he pulled away, Ronnie his kid brother was replaced by Auror Ronald Weasley, who sprang into action, surveying the scene, cataloguing evidence, and comforting the three victims, who he learned were Susan Bones, Lady Anne-Marie Bones, and Hannah Abbott, a close friend of Susan’s. Ron seemed to know the three of them personally; the second he walked over, Susan dived at him, sobbing into his chest. He handled it surprisingly well, wrapping first Susan, then Hannah, in strong hugs. He righted an overturned garden table and a set of chairs, and helped them into their seats, consoling Lady Bones, who seemed to be holding herself together by dignity alone. After casting a series of field diagnostic spells and shooting off a Patronus for St Mungo’s, he began interviewing them gently, offering a hand to hold, conjuring a white handkerchief, whispering reassurances.

It was like watching Ginny dueling all over again; sometime in between them wetting their diapers and now, they had become powerful and capable and tough. It hit him all at once; his baby brother had been fighting Death Eaters since he was fifteen years old. His baby brother had spent a year running from Voldemort. His baby brother had destroyed pieces of the Dark Lord’s soul.

And here he was now, holding strong for this family even through his own exhaustion. Here he was, digging his heels into the dirt, saying _“don’t worry,”_ and _“I’ve got you.”_ He’d become another person. Charlie was so proud that it hurt his chest. He only wished he could have been there to see it.

He sat beside the Boneses while Ron collected their statements, offering his own conjured handkerchief and humming sympathetically as the three of them muddled their way through an explanation. A few minutes into it, Draco reappeared beside him, listening quietly.

They’d been visiting in the parlor after dinner when their Floo had been hijacked; they only just made it out of the room before they were set upon by a pack of werewolves.

“I burned them alive,” Susan said, clinging to Ron, choking out her words through sobs. “They’re not animals, they’re people, they’re just like Professor Lupin, and I burned them alive…”

“I’m sorry, Suzie,” Ron murmured, holding her. “I’m sorry.”

“We tried to get out through the kitchen door,” Lady Bones explained. “There’s a one-way portkey in the orchard just past the yard; it used to go to my sister Amelia’s house, but she died during the war. Now it goes to straight to the Abbotts’. We tried to run to it, but when we got to the kitchen, our wards locked us in.”

“We could hear them on the other side of the kitchen door, trying to blast it down,” Hannah cut in tiredly. We tried to sneak out the back door, but there was some kind of explosion. When we got out into the yard, they were already there. Ron, if you hadn’t been there…”

“It’s alright,” Ron said, “I wouldn’t have let them hurt you.”

“We dueled them,” Hannah said, turning to Charlie. “There were three of them, Death Eaters in black cloaks. We killed one of them, but then this man came…”

She shivered.

“He was mad,” Suzie said, her voice still unsteady. “He was doing blood magic on our back lawn. He took the body of the man we killed and cut it open, and he…started pouring the man’s blood everywhere. And he was _chanting,_ and there was something…I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“It was _wrong,”_ Hannah provided. “I couldn’t understand it, but it sounded…wrong. Then he just disappeared, and that massive black door came up from the ground, and the other Death Eaters tried to put us inside it. And they would have done, if Ron hadn’t come. Ron killed them, and then when the black door tried to pull us through, he grabbed us.”

Ron rubbed the back of his neck and looked away, blushing, and Hannah turned her pale eyes to Charlie.

“You must be Ron’s brother,” she said. “Charlie, I suppose, since I’ve already met the rest of the Weasley brothers.”

“Er…yeah,” Charlie replied.

“Are you an Auror too?” she asked.

“Oh. No. I’m a magizoologist. I work with dragons, mostly. And this is Draco, my apprentice.”

“Er…we’ve met,” Hannah replied, peering at Draco curiously.

“They subcontract for the Aurory occasionally,” Ron supplied. “They’re under an old wartime provision that’s still active.”

“Yes, I can understand why,” Lady Bones said. “Before she died, my sister Amelia was the head of the DMLE. Before the war, there were nearly a hundred Aurors, including special task forces. Now I understand you’re operating the entire department with barely a round dozen. And I heard Robards loaned four of you out to a homicide task force.”

“You know a lot about the department, Lady Bones,” Ron replied, surprised.

“I may have retired after the war, but I make it my business to stay informed. And let me just say, I’ll be having words with Robards over this. I trained him, you know, and I wasn’t impressed with him then, and I’m not impressed with him now. More interested in playing politics and advancing his career than looking out for his people. I’m sure it isn’t easy to recruit new Aurors after a war, especially with all these Death Eater attacks, but he’s hardly going out of his way, is he?”

Lady Bones ranted for several more minutes about the numerous shortcomings of Gawain Robards, the ill-advised and poorly-suited head of the DMLE, and it seemed to bring her back to herself. She turned to Charlie, fixing him with a stern gaze.

“And who was that man, then?” she asked. “The one that cast the ritual? When he reappeared in the circle, he was talking to you.”

“A Death Eater,” Charlie said directly. He knew from years of encounters with his own mother that the best way to dodge nosy old women was to give them just enough of the truth to keep them occupied with it.

“He was working for Voldemort abroad. I kept tabs on his movements for the Order during the war. Took down the rest of his cell, but…let’s just say I owe him one.”

Lady Bones, to her credit, didn’t so much as blink at the name.

“Hmmm,” she said thoughtfully. “You were a foreign agent then?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “I was a dragon keeper. I got involved unofficially, and only out of necessity.”

“I see,” she said, suspicion clear in her voice.

“You said you trained Robards,” Charlie said, redirecting her. “Were you an Auror?”

“Oh, many moons ago,” she replied, launching into long-story-mode. “My sister and I joined up together, but after ten years on the beat, I took a desk job in Transportation. I had my Suzie, you see, and I wanted a steady schedule so I could have more time with her…”

Charlie smiled, nodding in all the right places. The steady cadence of her voice seemed to calm Susan and Hannah, who had fallen silent, listening in rapt attention. Her story carried them until the Healers arrived, and Charlie excused himself and Draco so they could be examined.

A few moments later, Harry arrived with Hermione and Luna, followed by Dora, who collected Ron’s statement and sent him over to Luna. He watched the Healers loading three corpses onto stretchers as Dora strode toward them.

“Charlie,” she said, her voice hard. “You can’t keep doing this. It’s against the law for civilians to interfere in a Ministry investigation. I warned you to stay-”

“Stop, Dora,” he said. A curl of hot anger twisted through him. His face felt hot. His hand clenched around his wand.

“Just stop. You sent my baby brother to face down werewolves and Death Eaters with _no backup._ When we found him, he was about to _die_ Dora. Tell me all about how many laws I’m breaking, and I’ll tell you how many fucks I give.”

He stepped toward her until they were almost chest to chest.

“Guess how many fucks, Dora.”

“Weasley,” a reedy, wet-sounding voice cut in. “You’re dangerously close to spending the night in a cell. Step away from my Head Auror and reconsider your tone. You’ve already been warned once to stay out of Auror affairs. It’s out of deep respect for the actions you and your family took during the war that I don’t have you written up on obstruction charges. Do not try my patience any further.”

“Deputy Head Robards,” cried Hermione. “Oh, I’m so glad I found you!”

He’d been so preoccupied that he hadn’t noticed Hermione sidling up with Luna in tow.

“Unspeakable Granger,” Robards replied, acknowledging her stiffly. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

“Oh, certainly not, sir,” she replied. “It’s not a pleasure at all; it’s strictly business, you see. My partner and I were called in by Auror Potter to consult on a potential Category 5 animus-reverse-synthesis curse, Red Level. Cat 5’s are experimental and highly unstable, as I’m sure you know, so Auror Potter did quite well to call us in before it was able to proliferate.”

“I see,” replied Robards, flushing redder the longer she talked. “Excellent. Now, if I may-”

“Oh, of course you may!” Luna cut in, sweeping toward him. “I was so hoping you’d ask.”

“Deputy Head Robards, this is Luna Lovegood, Editor-in-Chief of the Quibbler newspaper,” Granger said, gesturing at her with a flourish. “She was unfortunate enough to be caught in the crossfire at the MacMillan Estate.”

“Oh, yes!” Luna said, nodding enthusiastically. “It was awful, really. I apparated in to see Ernie- my ex-boyfriend, you know, but we’re still quite good friends- but when I arrived, the whole manor was under siege from Death Eaters.”

At the mention of the word ‘newspaper,’ a vein popped out on the side of the man’s balding head, and Charlie could see it visibly swelling.

“And when she saw me,” Hermione continued, “she asked for an interview for an article she’s been working on.”

“It’s rather fascinating. You see, I’ve been investigating the ongoing staffing crisis within the DMLE for some time now,” Luna said, raising her voice to speak over Robards’ spluttering.

“And she was wondering about how the Aurory was managing to comply with the _Magical Law Enforcement Occupational Safety Standards Act_ as it pertains to the 1997 amendments regarding staffing allocations and workload demand requirements.”

“Yes,” Luna continued, “as both a citizen and a representative of the media, I was quite concerned when it appeared that Auror Potter had been sent to contain the attack _alone;_ I mean, he did defeat Lord Voldemort and all, but really, he’s only one person. Imagine my relief to hear that Head Auror Tonks was able to leverage wartime measures to compensate for the Aurory’s lackluster recruitment efforts.”

She flicked her wand, and a quill and parchment appeared from thin air in front of her.

“Deputy Head Robards, could you reassure the wizarding public of your commitment to maintaining the high standards expected of the Aurory?” she asked, blinking her blue eyes up at the man. “Will the DMLE continue to make use of qualified subcontractors to fill staffing gaps until the recruitment crisis has abated?”

“Certainly,” Robards ground out, his face now an aggressive shade of puce. “Thanks to the forward-thinking measures I proposed-”

“Oh, but don’t you mean that Head Auror Tonks proposed them?” Granger asked, cocking her head to the side in mock confusion.

“Why yes, of course,” Robards snarled, spittle flying from his thin, sallow lips. “Thanks to the forward-thinking measures that Head Auror Tonks proposed and I endorsed, the Department is able to maintain the high standards for safety and security outlined by the 1997 amendments…”

Luna needled the man until he was visibly twitching before rolling up her parchment and vanishing her quill.

“Well, I can certainly see where some less scrupulous department heads might try to keep the staffing crisis under wraps; that sort of logistical failure could cost Aurors their lives, and I’m sure the media would have a field day if word got out to the public about it. Could be terribly damaging to a rising politician’s career. Good thing we have a Deputy Head who’s willing to put the safety of his staff before his own career aspirations. There’s truly something to be said for transparent leadership. I’m going to take this straight to the office. I think I’ll be able to work it onto the front page.”

The second Robards had stormed out of earshot, Dora beamed at them.

“God, you two were brilliant. I am going to treasure that moment forever. I could kiss you right now.”

“Wouldn’t you like to grab dinner first?” Luna asked her, looking her up and down with a heavy gaze. “And maybe drinks?”

“Oh, er…” Dora locked eyes with her, flushing slightly. The flash of surprise on her face was quickly replaced by something more appraising. “I suppose most people do it in that order,” she replied.

“Great,” said Luna, flashing her a smile with a bit more tooth than usual. “Are you free tomorrow night? Do you like curry? There’s this great little place in muggle London only a few blocks from Diagon…”

“Curry sounds great,” Dora replied, a slow smile spreading across her face.

“Alright. Meet me in front of the Leaky around 7 tomorrow? We can walk there.”

“Right,” Dora said. “I’ve got to, er…got to do…Auror stuff now, but uh…yeah. See you tomorrow?”

“Until then,” Luna replied, voice low and just a bit heated.

Dora flashed her a goofy grin and jogged off, nearly crashing into Harry, who had walked up behind them.

“That is so unfair,” Harry said, shaking his head at Luna. “How can you be that smooth?”

“Am I?” Luna asked, blinking airily. “I’d never really noticed.”

“Everywhere we go,” Harry muttered, linking arms with her and walking off after Hermione, who had started back toward the house. “The bar, the coffee shop, the record store, the library…now, apparently, an active crime scene…”

“Oh, hush,” Luna chided. “I’m not that bad. Now help me find Ron. I made him sit down and rest, but I can’t remember where I put him.”

He watched them walk away, and Draco emerged from behind him, where he’d positioned himself at the first sight of Robards.

“Not a friend of yours?” Charlie asked.

“I loathe that man,” Draco replied. “I saw enough of him at my trial to last me the rest of my life. Though I’ve got to admit, it was worth seeing his slimy face to witness that.”

“No kidding,” Charlie grinned. “Alright, let’s get out of here. There’s not much more we can do, and I want to go check on Severus.”

“Speaking of Severus,” Draco said, looking up at Charlie, then away again. “You and Severus? I mean, you, er…”

“What, Draco?” Charlie asked, already knowing the answer.

“You’re gay?” Draco blurted. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well I’m…not, exactly,” Charlie said.

“Bisexual, then?”

“No. Not that either.”

Draco looked up at him, brow furrowed.

“Look, ask me tomorrow after I’ve slept and when we’re not in the middle of an actual crime scene.”

“Alright,” Draco said, looking a bit confused.

Draco held out his hand even though he knew he could apparate himself now, and Ginny was right, it _was_ sort of cute. Charlie smiled and took his hand and apparated them home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	48. Charlie Weasley and the World That Was Not His Own

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Severus. May you finally begin to see the light.
> 
> If anyone would like to see some old-school fanart by Madtwinsart that inspired my headcanon of Tobias and Eileen, I shared it on Tumblr (link at end of chapter)
> 
> Trigger warning for description of past domestic violence.

The first thing he saw was his little sister, sitting up on the kitchen table in her bra and knickers, with Theo Nott’s hand pressed up against her chest. Just when he’d gotten to like the boy, too.

“Oh, hey Charlie,” she said.

Charlie picked a spot on the ceiling and stared at it.

“Ginny. What are you doing naked in the kitchen?” he asked.

“Got hit with that spell. And I’m not naked, Charlie, get a grip.”

“Wait, what spell?” he asked.

“Nasty. Yellow. Makes you see shit that’s not there.”

“It was a Category 5 animus-reverse-synthesis curse, Red Level,” Theo supplied.

“In English, Theo,” Draco snapped.

“It’s a type of curse that’s been reverse-engineered from Occlumency. Instead of trying to keep other people out of your mind, it keeps you inside.”

“And what is it that you’re doing, exactly?” Charlie asked.

“In English,” Draco added before Theo could open his mouth.

“I’m using a spell I created myself to try to identify residual compulsions left behind by the curse. Before we worked in the Time Room, Hermione and I were in Memories. We were looking into a series of reverse-engineered mind curses very similar to this one, but we were pulled off the project.”

“How come?” Charlie asked.

“I’m afraid I can’t say. I shouldn’t really be discussing the curse with you either, but I figured since you’d both been hit with it, you already know it exists. I’m not revealing classified secrets if you find out about them on your own.”

“Right,” Ginny said, looking between the two of them strangely. “Theo, I’d like to know if there’s dark magic in my body, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh,” he said, looking back at her. “Yes. I mean, no. There are no traces. You’re free of compulsions.”

“Perfect. Hand me my shirt, would you? It’s bloody freezing in here.”

“Ginny?” Draco asked. “After you got hit with the spell, what happened?”

“I started seeing shit. Hermione hit me with _Finite._ Just like with Charlie before.”

“Then why did it affect Severus differently?” Draco asked. “Charlie, are you sure it was the same spell?”

“It’s because it didn’t work properly when me and Charlie were hit by it,” Ginny said. “After I snapped out of it, I found the fucker who cursed me and interrogated him. Ernie and his dad both have Wizengamot seats. They had Veritaserum.”

“What did you find out?” Charlie asked.

“The spell is meant to trap you inside your own head, like what happened to Snape. But apparently, it’s a really hard spell. We were affected differently because whoever cast it on us wasn’t powerful enough to get it to work properly. That’s why it broke so easily for us with _Finite._ But Snape got hit with the real thing.”

“How do you reverse it?” Charlie asked, feeling panic mounting in his chest.

“I don’t know. Sirius reckons we can go into Snape’s head with Legilimency and pull him back out, but he’s been having a hard time of it. You should go ask him. Theo and I are about to go to St. Mungo’s. Both Dean and Seamus are there.”

“Are they alright?”

“Honestly? I’d be more worried about the Death Eaters. By the time Dean even got there, Seamus’ mum had the lot of them tied up with clothesline. The only man left conscious was actually begging to be arrested. Dean and Shay had a few bumps and scrapes. Ron’s there too; Robards bullied Harry into taking him instead of going with Luna, and she’s trying to get them all out now.”

“Alright,” he replied. “Be careful.”

“I will,” she said. You and Draco go check on Snape.”

“We will.”

When Charlie pushed open Severus’ bedroom door, he found the man laying in bed with a blanket tucked up to his chin and a werewolf curled up beside his feet. He stepped over the threshold, and Remus lifted his head and thumped his tail gently. Sirius was sitting on the floor beside the bed, his knees pulled up to his chest, staring unblinkingly at Severus. Every now and then, his eyes would flick back and forth, as though he was watching something they couldn’t see.

“Sirius?” Charlie said gently. “Sirius, can you hear me?”

He didn’t want to startle the man; he didn’t know him terribly well, despite having lived at his house for over a month, but he’d heard enough stories from his brothers and sister over the years to know that he’d never fully recovered from his stay in Azkaban. He walked over and sat on the floor beside him, taking care not to loom over him.

“Sirius!” he said more firmly. “Sirius Black!”

The man blinked several times, then looked at Charlie as though trying to focus his eyes.

“Hello, Charlie. Draco. Everything alright?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. We’re fine. We just…wondered how Severus was doing.”

“He’s not injured, if that’s what you’re asking,” he replied.

“No, I mean…he got hit with the same spell Ginny and I did,” Charlie said. “But Ginny said he’s…stuck like this?”

“Like fuck he is,” Sirius replied harshly. Charlie searched his face, and found the same fierce look that he associated with Ginny. Protectiveness.

“I’m sorry,” he said gently. “I didn’t mean…”

“It’s alright,” Sirius replied, softening. “Originally, the spell was developed by Healers to transport torture victims. It was meant to be temporary, put the victim in a safe place inside their own mind for a couple hours so they could be moved without having to rely on sedation spells. If they needed the patient back before the spell wore off, it was easy enough to pull them out using Legilimency. But as you can see, the modified version of the spell _locks_ the victim inside their mind permanently, until someone pulls them out or they die of starvation.”

Charlie visibly shivered, squeezing his eyes shut against the thought.

“Problem is, I’m having a hard time pulling him out,” Sirius said. “I’ve found him in there, but he won’t come with me. He thinks I’m…well, suffice it to say we didn’t get on when we were kids, and he doesn’t trust me enough to come with me.”

“So how do we get him out?” Charlie asked.

“Well, I was going to ask Ginny to try…she seems to have a way with him. But, well…you’re here, and he likes you. Or at least I think he does…It’s hard to tell with Snape. But he insults you marginally less, which I think means he likes you. Can you perform Legilimency?”

“Well…sort of. I mean, I learned Occlumency, but my ment- I mean, the person who taught me Occlumency-wasn’t too keen on the Legilimency part. She likened it to rape.”

“Well, she wasn’t wrong. More often than not, the spell is used without consent. But it doesn’t have to be, and anyway, we’re trying to reverse a magical coma, not nosing around in his memories for a lark.”

“Well, yes, but…I don’t know if he’d be very happy to see me at the moment.”

“Charlie. I don’t know the full effects of this spell. The longer he stays under it, the more likely it is to do him permanent damage. Please. Just try.”

“Alright,” Charlie said, struck by a sudden sense of urgency. He raised his wand. _“Legilimens!”_

He wasn’t much of a Legilimens _,_ but he knew that what he was seeing was not how Legilimency worked. Instead of seeing flashes of memory, or scenes, he found himself standing in a room as though he were viewing a Pensieve memory.

The room was tiny, lit only by the fire blazing in the sooty hearth. All four walls had been built into shelves, and every shelf was laden with ancient-looking books, their leather spines cracking in the dry air, each spine emblazoned with a house crest. There was a threadbare sofa, stained yellow by tobacco smoke and sagging in the middle, and beside it, a matching loveseat. In front of the sofa, there was a battered old coffee table with an ashtray in the center. Across from the sofa was a small card table, and on the table sat a boxy contraption with two wires jutting from the top; a television, Charlie remembered. Beside the television was a knobby old radio.

A man walked into the room, flipping on the television. Charlie could hear the low smattering of laughter emitting from it. Static crackled across the screen.

“Fuckin’ piece ‘er shit,” the man muttered, adjusting the wires at the top of the box.

He was tall, easily over six foot, thin, and wiry. He wore a faded flannel shirt, worn clean through at the elbows, and over that, a pair of bib overalls with a broken clasp and patches around the knees. He had the same hooked nose and full mouth as Severus, but his hair was lighter, the color of milky coffee, and his eyes were as blue as Charlie’s own. His face was heavily lined, sunburnt, and rough with grey-brown stubble.

He sat heavily on the sofa, jammed a bottle of dry stout under the edge of the coffee table, and popped the cap off neatly, muttering to himself.

“Well come on then, son, what ‘er yeh doin’ standin’ there.”

The man was swaying slightly. His bottle was sweating onto the table. Around his feet, a collection of the same empty bottles had already formed.

“Come on in, then,” the man said.

A boy emerged from the shadows, smallish, perhaps a bit underweight. His jet-black, bowl-cut hair was almost shocking against his pasty skin. He was wearing a threadbare t-shirt that looked like it was long enough to be a dress over a pair of too-short trousers. Severus. It was Severus, unmistakably. He couldn’t have been more than eight years old. His eyes were dark. He approached the man mistrustfully.

“Well come on, get up here with your Dad,” the man repeated.

Severus climbed up on the sofa and crawled toward the man, coming as close as he dared.

“There’s my boy,” the man said. “Let me look at yeh.”

He reached out and grabbed Severus by the chin, turning his head to the side roughly, and Severus leaned into the touch, closing his eyes for a second as though working up the courage to scoot closer. Charlie could see a faded bruise, yellow under one eye.

“Them boys ‘aven’t been givin’ yeh no more trouble, then?” he asked gruffly.

“No, Dad,” Severus replied.

“Good. You’re not gonna be scrawny all your life boy, but until yeh grow a bit, you’re gonna have to learn to hit back. I’m not raisin’ no milksop for a son.”

The man dug in the front pocket of his faded flannel shirt, pulled out a silver packet, and slid out a cigarette and a match. He struck it and lit his cigarette in a smooth motion, sucking on it and blowing out a cloud of smoke.

“What’d yeh learn at school today, son?”

Severus looked alarmed.

“Maths. And grammar, and science,” he said finally.

“Speak up, boy,” the man snarled.

 _“Maths and grammar and science,”_ Severus repeated, a little too loud this time. He looked afraid.

“Maths,” the man repeated, chuckling to himself as though it were some private joke. “And grammar. And science. What’s yeh like best, then?”

He coughed around another drag of his cigarette.

“Go on son. Speak up.”

“Erm…maths,” said Severus.

“Well…my boy’s got a head for figurin,’ then. There’s nothin’ wrong with that! Yer Dad used to have a head for figurin,’ too.”

Severus smiled up at him, close lipped and cautious.

“EILEEN!” he bellowed suddenly.

 _“What is it, Tobias?”_ came a muffled shout from across the house.

“GET IN HERE, EILEEN!”

Moments later, a rail-thin, sallow-faced woman appeared in the doorway, her black eyes glittering coldly down at the man and boy. She wore a high-necked, long-sleeved black dress, with dingy white lace peering out from the collar and sleeves, clasped at the throat with a large, garnet brooch bearing the same house crest that had been stamped on the books.

“Eileen,” he said. “Our boy’s got a head for figurin.’ We’ve got ourselves a right little professor on our hands.”

She blinked at this as though the man were speaking Greek.

“I learned maths today at school, Mum,” Severus repeated dutifully. “I like figurin’ the best out of everything.”

It was a bit surreal hearing Severus Snape, even a child version of himself, speaking with his father’s accent, so far removed from his usual controlled enunciation.

“Did you?” his mother asked, sitting across from him on the loveseat.

Tobias got up and made his way unsteadily out of the room, returning a moment later with a bottle of wine and an empty glass jam jar. He pulled the cork from the bottle with a loud ‘pop’ and filled the glass almost to the rim. There was a song playing on the television, and he reached over and turned it up just a bit.

“I love you because you understand, dear,” he began singing along lowly in a surprisingly pleasant voice. “Every single thing I try to do. Doo doo doo dum dum dum da dum, dear. I love you most of all because you're you.”

He sidled over to Eileen, and tried to press the glass into her hands, but she turned away.

“No, Tobias. It’s too early.”

“No matter what the world may say about me,” he sang, pushing the glass toward her again. “I know your love will always see me through.”

“Tobias,” she said again. “No.”

“What’s wrong with it, Eileen?” he said, his voice going harsh. “Don’t want it if it’s not out of a proper glass? D’yeh want me to serve it on a silver platter, then?”

“No, Tobias, I-”

“Too posh for rabble like us, yer Mum is,” he spat, looking at Severus with something like sadness, or contempt. Then, after another moment, he began humming again. “I love you because my heart is lighter…Every time I'm walking by your side…”

He pushed the glass toward her again, and she took it with a sigh. He lit another cigarette. She took a long drink from the jar.

They sat that way for several minutes, Tobias humming along with the variety show on television, Eileen staring blankly at the screen, sipping her wine with a determined delicacy. Finally, Severus looked back and forth between them a few times, then looked straight up at Charlie, glaring at him harshly. He slid off the sofa and walked quietly through the door and out into a dark hall, and Charlie followed him, passing through a dingy kitchen with faded, peeling wallpaper and out a back door.

“How come I can see you, but they can’t?” he demanded as soon as they were outside.

“Because this is a memory,” Charlie replied honestly, not knowing what else to say.

“That’s what Black said,” Severus replied, “But he’s an arrogant, lying buffoon.”

“Black?” Charlie asked, feigning confusion. “But…if this isn’t a memory, how would you know who Black is? You don’t meet him until Hogwarts, remember?”

Severus’ eyes widened.

“He was trying to get me to go with him,” Severus said. “He was using Legilimency on me. But I’m not going to fall for his stupid tricks. He’s not the only one who can do mind magic.”

“Yes. He wanted you to go with him. To go back home. You’re stuck in a memory, Severus. You need to go back home.”

“But that’s mad,” Severus said flatly. “You can’t get _stuck_ in a memory.”

“Sounds mad, I know. But here we are,” Charlie replied.

The sound of muffled shouting leaked through the walls of the house, and a dark look passed across Severus’ face.

“Well I’m not going. I want to stay here with my Mum and Dad.”

“Severus, you-”

There was a loud crash. The boy jerked, then darted back through the door, and Charlie ran after him, back through the house.

“- _think I don’t know that, Eileen?”_

“Let _go_ of me!”

“Why? So you can take my boy and run back home to daddy? It’s not good enough here for you, is it? _We’re_ not good enough for you.”

Severus skidded to a stop in the doorway, and over his shoulder, Charlie saw Eileen twist her wrist out of Tobias’ grip and lunge for the door. She had her wand in one hand, and there was an angry, red welt running down the length of his cheek. Tobias reached out and snatched her back, jerking her against him and slapping her once, hard across the face.

“Let GO OF ME, TOBIAS,” she shrieked.

“Gonna wave your _magic fuckin’ wand_ again, Eileen? I know what yer doin.’ Yer makin’ me _forget._

“I’m _not!_ I don’t even _know that spell!_ I’m not-”

“DON’T LIE TO ME,” he roared, shoving her roughly against the wall.

“Dad!” Severus cried, flinging himself at the man, tugging at his arm. “Dad, listen! Let Mum go!”

Tobias shook the boy away roughly, sending him toppling to the floor.

“I’LL BREAK IT! I’LL SNAP IT IN HALF! Yer not takin' my boy away from me! Yer not RUNNIN' AWAY TO DADDY! YOU THINK YOU CAN MAKE ME FORGET, EILEEN? ALL THE FUCKIN' MAGIC IN THE FUCKIN' WORLD COULDN'T MAKE ME FORGET YOU!

“Let Mum go!”

"You think you can just...you think you can..."

Tobias' face was mottled with rage; his hand had found her throat and wrapped around it, and Charlie could see her pale flesh growing red beneath his grip.

“Severus!” Charlie barked. “It’s a memory, Severus. You can’t do anything to change this. It’s already happened.”

Charlie stepped forward, scooped the little boy up, and strode out of the room, unwilling to witness however it ended.

“Put me down!” Severus cried. “I have to go back!”

Charlie slipped back through the kitchen door, shutting it firmly behind him, and sat on the top step. He held the boy, rubbing his back in little circles, until he went limp against Charlie’s chest.

“Let me go,” Severus said, even as he wrapped his arms around Charlie’s neck.

“Alright,” said Charlie, loosening his grip. Severus held on for a long while, and Charlie just held him, carding his fingers through the boy’s dark hair. After a while, the dim streetlights began to flicker, and the air around him took on a nebulous quality, the way vapor looks rising into the air.

“Who are you?” Severus asked. “If this is a memory…who are you?”

“My name is Charlie Weasley.”

Severus looked up at him, and there was a flash of something that looked like longing in his eyes.

“Charlie?” he asked.

“Yeah. It’s me.”

“Charlie? What the _fuck are you doing? Get out of my head!”_

And with that, Charlie found himself lying on the floor of Grimmauld Place, listening to Severus arguing loudly with Sirius.

“…can’t stop you from thinking that if you want to, but we didn’t have a choice!” Black cried. “You think I wanted you rooting around in my head either? Thanks for that, by the way. Loved the trip down memory lane.”

“So sorry to have inconvenienced you, Black! Next time you decide to force your way into my mind, I’ll try to be more accommodating!”

“LISTEN TO ME YOU UTTER PILLOCK!” Sirius thundered. “YOU WERE IN AN IRREVERSIBLE MAGICAL COMA! WHAT WERE WE SUPPOSED TO DO? Leave you trapped inside your memories until you starved to death? Watching the same shitty, miserable old fucking memories while your cells dried out from dehydration and your organs shut down and your heart stopped beating? WELL TOO FUCKING BAD!”

With that, he turned on his heel and stormed from the room, Remus trotting after him with his tail tucked against his body and his head low to the ground.

Charlie walked over, closed the door, turned around, walked back, sat on the edge of the bed. Severus sat down beside him and let out a heavy sigh.

“I’m…sorry,” Charlie said. “I’m sorry, but I…Sirius wasn’t exaggerating, Severus. If we hadn’t pulled you out, you would have died.”

“Do it again,” Severus said, barely audible. The sconces were flickering on the walls, casting just enough light to make out the expression on Severus’ face. He was looking at Charlie the same way he had looked at his father, as though he wasn’t sure whether or not it was safe to be so close.

“Do it again,” he repeated, and it took Charlie a moment to work out what he meant.

“Oh,” Charlie said. “Oh. Alright.”

He reached for Severus, wrapping an arm around him and pulling him into his chest. It was rather more awkward now that he was a grown man again, and taller than Charlie himself, but Charlie managed to curl Severus against his side. He sat and held him, rubbing his back until he felt the man slowly relax against him. He dug his fingers into Severus' hair again, scratching his scalp gently. Severus sucked in a breath and tucked his face into Charlie's neck as if he was trying to hide there. Finally, Charlie pulled away, pushed Severus down onto the bed, and tugged the cover up over him. The man lay still, strangely compliant.

"Get some sleep, alright?" Charlie said. "I’ll see you in the morning.”

He paused in the doorway and turned around.

“Don’t…” he began. “Don’t run off in the night. Please.”

When he finally made it back to his bed, he threw himself into it with his clothes still on and curled in on himself, remembering Tobias Snape examining his son’s bruised face, and the way Severus had leaned into the touch with the look of a hungry dog in his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Also, if anyone was wondering, the song Tobias was singing to Eileen is "I Love You Because" by Jim Reeves:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR_wHa0OLa0


	49. Severus Snape and the Kiss Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short bit of Snarlie before we pick back up with the plot. 
> 
> Trigger warnings for brief mention of past child abuse and sexual content.

Severus woke with a cold dread in the pit of his gut, and for a few, disoriented seconds, he couldn’t remember _why,_ until it came back in a shameful rush. His childhood home, with its nicotine stains and peeling walls, with the clink of empty brown bottles rolling across the grimy floors. His father, sloppy-drunk, stumbling over the line between love and obsession. His mother, who couldn’t tell the difference between the two.

He’d thought back when he left them, before the first war, that he wouldn’t miss them, but he’d been so naïve back then. He’d missed them until he was twisted up inside with it.

His Dad used to read the weekly serials aloud to them out of the paper in the evenings, after they’d finished dinner, before he’d gotten too far down into his bottle. He’d do all the accents- Irish mob-boss, Cockney taxi driver, posh lord of the manor. When he did Welsh fisherman, his Mum would laugh her small, tinkling laugh every time.

Tobias Snape did not hug; he didn’t hug, or hold Severus’ hand, or scoop him up when he’d fallen and skinned his knees red. And Severus was no mummy’s boy. He didn’t crawl on Mum’s lap. He didn’t hug her goodbye when he left for school in the mornings. Dad wouldn’t have it; he didn’t raise Severus to be _soft._ But sometimes, if he was good, Dad would clap him on the back, or ruffle his hair. And sometimes Mum would pull out her wand and spell the fire in the fireplace to burn in colors or twist the thick puffs of Dad’s cigarette smoke into little, grey-white robins. And sometimes, if he was lucky, Mum would let him hold her wand, and he would send up sparks with it in all different colors, and Dad would murmur _“my boy,”_ and squeeze his shoulder.

When he was eight years old, he accidentally broke every single dish in the house in a fit of accidental magic, and his Dad, brown-liquor drunk, had beat him for it until his arse and the backs of his thighs were welted red-raw from the leather belt. But the next morning, Dad had staggered into the kitchen and helped them piece together the broken shards of their bowls and cups and plates so Mum could spell them whole. And Dad took the coffee tin out of the bottom of the icebox and counted out every last note and coin inside it. By the end of the day, Severus was standing before Garrick Ollivander, clutching a new wand, twelve inches, unyielding, cedar wood with a dragon-heartstring core ( _“Strength of character, fierce loyalty…Cedar carriers tend to make frightening adversaries. Never met one that I care to cross wands with, that’s for certain. You’ve been chosen by a fine wand, my boy.”)._

And when he got home, he was so full of happiness, of the feeling of _rightness_ , that he couldn’t keep it all inside him. He ran to show Dad his wand, _his own wand,_ and the sheer joy in his heart had made brilliant, hot-white sparks pour from the tip of it.

_“That’s my boy. Got him his very own magic wand…that’s my boy…”_

And Dad had cupped Severus’ cheek in his hand, rubbing his rough thumb against his face and looking between Severus and his Mum as though he wasn’t quite sure they were real. It was the last time Severus could remember the man touching him with anything like gentleness. But out of all the years of harsh blows that followed, that moment was the one that Severus had remembered, burning like an ember in his heart. He’d never quite figured out how to stop himself from wanting that.

His mother and father…there had been something sick about their love, something possessive and desperate, the kind of love that had made them willing to _hurt_ each other for more of it. And he wasn’t too blind to see it in himself. He’d loved Lily that way; she was his best friend, _his_ best friend, and he had wanted her time and her closeness and her devotion, and when he’d caught her sharing herself with anyone else, he’d wanted to _hurt_ them, because she was _his._ He’d wanted Regulus that way, too; wanted all of him, his gaze, his breath, his skin under Severus’ fingernails, every second and every smile. He’d loved them so hard he’d hurt them, gotten them killed.

And everything he’d done to separate himself from his parents had been for nothing. He’d learned to walk straight-backed, to lose his father’s graceless swagger, to round out his vowels, to linger at the consonants at the end of words, to dress and walk and speak as though he were anything other than a poor miller’s son. But he’d turned out just as desperate, just as hungry. And Charlie would _know._ Charlie had wanted to know him. And now he would.

It was there, sitting on the edge of the bed in the early morning dark, fear clawing at the inside of him, _exposed,_ that Charlie found him.

“Hey,” he said, slipping through the bedroom door without knocking. “I was...er. I was just checking to see if you were still here. I mean, I didn’t think…”

He sat on the bed beside Severus and looked at him uncertainly, and Severus remembered, with a hot flush of shame, how he’d crawled halfway onto Charlie’s lap, begging to be held like some kind of-

But the thought died midway between one neuron and the next, because in the next moment his entire brain was occupied by Charlie, who had laid his hand against the side of Severus’ neck, his fingers curling around and digging into his hair. In that moment, his control snapped; he lunged forward, grabbed the collar of Charlie’s t-shirt, hauled him down, and crushed their mouths together, dragging his tongue across Charlie’s bottom lip.

“Oh, _fuck,_ Severus,” Charlie murmured.

Charlie tugged him closer, and the feeling of being trapped in the circle of his arms, pressed against the solidness of his chest, had Severus gasping out loud. The sound _disgusted_ him; it was _pathetic_ , but he slipped his tongue between Charlie’s teeth and Charlie’s arms tightened around him, and his heart was racing, and he felt _mad._ When Charlie pulled away from the kiss, Severus chased his lips and reclaimed them, and the rational part of his brain was screaming, _“Stop this; you’ve let it go too far,”_ but he _couldn’t._ His tongue tangled with Charlie’s, and Charlie tightened his hand in Severus’ hair, and his hips rolled against Charlie’s and he couldn’t _stop._ He pulled away again, and the sight of Charlie, with his lips swollen and wet, looking dazed, made Severus’ breath catch in his throat, and he reached down and captured his lips again, and the moan that he tore from Charlie’s throat might have killed him had he been a lesser man.

“God, Charlie, what the fuck are you doing to me?” he whispered.

He was fully on top of Charlie now, knees straddling his lap, and Charlie’s arms were locked around his back, and he leaned back against them, closing his eyes and trying to catch his breath.

“Severus…” Charlie breathed, looking up at him with his blue eyes gob-smacked. “Severus, that might have been the single most erotic thing that’s ever happened to me, and I sort of hate myself for doing this, but I really think we need to talk.”

Severus very much did not want to talk. Severus wanted to run, before he could do anything else mad. But Charlie had pulled him so close that they were chest to chest, and their hips were slotted together, and he could feel Charlie’s cock, hard against his own through the thin flannel of their pajamas, and he couldn’t help but roll his hips up.

 _“Fuck,”_ Charlie breathed. He wrapped his hand around the back of Severus’ head and pulled it toward him and buried his head against the side of Severus’ neck and ground his erection into Severus’ and _moaned,_ and then they were rocking together, and Severus could hear himself babbling softly, whispering, _“oh, fuck Charlie, yes.”_ His cock was throbbing, and Charlie was mouthing hard, toothy kisses against his neck, and he _needed_ something, he _needed…_

 _“Please, Charlie,”_ he heard himself begging, and the way Charlie’s grip tightened around him at the word ‘ _please’_ had him half out of his mind, and he was so close he could feel it coiling at the base of his spine, but then the door creaked open, and a voice whispered through the dark.

“Charlie?”

He jolted away from Charlie as though he’d been burned.

“Is Severus alright?”

The blond top of Draco’s head peered through the door.

“Oh! Shit! Sorry, I…I’ll just be going, then,” Draco cried, jerking back and shutting the door firmly.

“Dammit, Draco,” Charlie muttered. “Sorry about that, he…”

Severus’ heart was racing; he felt _unsafe._

“Are you alright?” Charlie asked, his eyes concerned.

“I…”

His words caught in his throat. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. Charlie watched him, troubled.

“Look,” Charlie said gently. “We really do need to talk. I’ve got to see to Draco now; it’s time for our PT. But later, yeah?”

Severus looked up at him mutely and nodded, and a familiar dread rose up in him at the sight of Charlie’s back turning, but before he had a chance to panic, Charlie whipped back around, grabbed his hip, and pulled him close.

“Severus?” Charlie asked, his voice low. “Can I kiss you goodbye?”

“Yes,” he replied, wondering if perhaps he was still asleep, and this was all just a very erotic dream. But Charlie’s hand reached up, solid and real, and cupped his cheek and drew him down into a kiss, hungry and toothy and rough. Severus watched a little smile spread on Charlie’s face as he pulled away, and he couldn’t help but reach forward one more time and press one more kiss, _one more, just one more,_ against the corner of that smile.

“Oh, fuck,” Charlie whispered. “Alright. Yeah. I’ll, uh…I’ll see you later, Severus.”

“Until then,” Severus replied, and he laid back in bed and listened to Charlie slip out the door in the dark and thought that he’d like to kiss him goodbye every morning. He wanted that, he realized, and the thought was paralyzing. He wanted that.

 _“You’re sick,”_ something inside himself reminded him. _“You’re sick; you’ll ruin him.”_

But Charlie’s arms around him had been warm, and Charlie had pressed his kiss so _insistently_ against his lips that he shut his eyes against the thought, trying to pretend it wasn't true. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	50. Draco Malfoy and the Tower at the Top of the Steps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man! I thought I was never going to get this chapter written...I kept crumpling it up and starting over. But here it is- Draco is nosy, Charlie's asexual little heart comes out of the closet, and we finally, finally get to the top of those stairs.  
> \
> 
> Coming up in future installments: Charlie flirts with Severus, Severus is awkward, Ginny wipes the floor with the opposition, Harry is dashing and chivalrous, and Draco misinterprets everything. Stay tuned!
> 
> Trigger warnings for this chapter: coming out, brief mentions of past drug use, brief mentions of sexual content

By the time they’d appeared in the clearing, Draco had worked himself into an outright panic, sure that Charlie was going to punish him somehow for his untimely appearance. But Charlie wasn’t focused on that; as a matter of fact, Charlie wasn’t focused on anything at all. He seemed to be fighting Draco as if on autopilot, which was a little insulting, honestly. But when, for the first time ever, Draco managed to land a strike on Charlie, he stopped short, springing out of Charlie’s range and levelling him with a concerned look.

“Oh, come on, Draco,” Charlie groaned. “Do you really want to talk about it?”

“Yes,” Draco replied firmly. “You’ve never let me hit you before. You’re scaring me.”

At that, Charlie huffed loudly, vanished the snow below him, and flopped down onto the ground. It was too early for meditation; they’d been practicing with wooden swords, and Draco was due to learn guards today, but Charlie warmed the dirt and lay back against it all the same.

“I’ve got it bad,” Charlie said finally, after Draco had settled in by his side. 

“Really?” Draco asked. “You and…Severus?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?” Charlie grumbled.

“Well, I mean…Severus is my godfather…it’s a bit like walking in on your parents,” Draco said, and Charlie grimaced sympathetically.

“But…Charlie?” Draco asked. “Are you…I mean, you said you’re not gay or bisexual, but…”

“Ugh.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want,” Draco added quickly.

“It’s alright,” Charlie said. “I’m asexual.”

“You’re…what?”

“Asexual,” Charlie sighed. “It means instead of being attracted to one sex, or both, you’re not attracted to anyone. At least not sexually.”

“Alright,” Draco said slowly, blinking at him. “But when I walked in on you and Severus, what you were doing was definitely…”

“Sexual, yes. It’s…not exactly black and white. Some asexual people don’t experience any sexual attraction at all, and some only in certain circumstances…”

“So you…don’t have sex? Are you a…um…are you a virgin?”

Charlie laughed out loud at that.

“Hardly,” he replied, grinning. “I fucked my way halfway across eastern Europe. Just because I don’t want sex doesn’t mean my partners don’t.”

“You have sex people even though you don’t want to?” Draco asked, looking horrified.

“No. It’s more like…I only want to fuck them _because_ they want to, and then I don’t really want them to fuck me back. I like doing shit with other people. I don’t always want it reciprocated.”

There was a clear conflict on Charlie’s face, and Draco felt a bit guilty for prying.

“Sorry,” he said. “I…shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No, it’s…it’s alright. I kind of…hate talking about it, but it’s also kind of nice? I mean, no one knows besides Percy, and he’s…supportive, in his own way, but he doesn’t really get it. He thinks I’m really gay, and I have some kind of complex…”

“Er…you can talk to me,” Draco said, aware that he probably sounded exactly as awkward as he felt. “If you want. I mean, I told you about…”

“Thanks, Draco,” Charlie said, leaning into him.

“Charlie?” Draco asked gently. “Your other partner…”

“Greta?” Charlie asked, his voice going hollow.

“Yeah.”

“What about her?”

“You were in love with her,” Draco said flatly.

“Yes.”

“Are you still? I mean, this thing with Severus…He’s not one to just fall into bed,” Draco said, steeling himself for what he was about to say. “He’s got…I mean, I’ve known Severus my whole life, and I’ve never seen him act even remotely interested in anyone. If you’re not serious about him…”

“Oh, I’m serious,” Charlie said, closing his eyes and drawing a deep breath.

“But that woman…”

“Draco. I was in love with her. She was my best, and maybe my only friend. When I was growing up, I…I was a swotty little punk. I was Billy’s Little Brother, or I was Gryffindor’s Seeker. I had exactly one friend, and that was Dora Tonks, and she ended up hating me because I didn’t want to have sex with her, and Billy was always willing to make time for his dorky little brother, but I felt like I was _bothering him_ , and Percy spent all his time chasing the twins around the castle, and I was _lonely as hell,_ Draco. School was seven years of misery. It was…everyone was obsessed with each other, and snogging each other behind tapestries, and sneaking off to fuck in bathrooms, and girls kept…following me down the corridors…”

“Oh, wow, Charlie, that must have been awful,” Draco deadpanned.

“It was!” Charlie cried. “It was awful! I didn’t want to kiss them, or touch them, or fuck them…I just wanted to play Quidditch and meet the giant talking spiders that Hagrid had hidden in the Forest. But I kept trying, _because I thought I was supposed to!_ And it always felt…awful and wrong. And I kept making excuses to get out of taking girls on dates, and then the whole school decided I preferred blokes. Which is…sort of halfway accurate, but I hadn’t really realized that yet, and honestly? It was sort of humiliating to find out about my own sexuality from the Hogwarts rumor mill. And then I tried with blokes, and it _still felt wrong._ And I…I thought there was something wrong with me.”

Draco sucked in a breath and threw his arms around Charlie, startling a little ‘oof’ out of him.

“And then there was Dora…she was sort of a hopeless romantic. Reckoned I’d just not found the right person, and that it would be different if it were her. It…wasn’t different. We had a lot of sex that I didn’t want to have. Dora’s…she mostly presents as a woman in public, but Dora doesn’t really stick to one gender. I liked…doing things to her. I like the way she reacted. I liked knowing that I could make her feel like that. But when she tried to touch me back or suck me off, I couldn’t…And she took it personally. She thought I was put off because she was genderqueer, which honestly couldn’t have been further from the truth. I loved her.”

“She was my best friend. I loved her whether she had a cock or a fanny or both. I just didn’t want to fuck her. Or get fucked. And I didn’t know what asexual even was. I didn’t…have the vocabulary to explain it to her. So we ended up in a lot of screaming rows until we finally broke it off, and she hated me. I lost my only friend. I was depressed as hell.”

“It was Hagrid that got me out of there in the end; he saw how bad I needed to be out of that castle, and he figured working outdoors would be good for me. He set it all up, got ahold of a friend of his on the reserve, convinced Dumbledore to let me sit NEWTS a year early…and I threw myself at that opportunity. Passed NEWTS with straight Outstandings. Even Mum couldn’t complain about me leaving. Of course, I didn’t work long at the reserve before I got recruited by the Chief…I was the first student to sit NEWTS early in decades, and probably the only one ever to pull it off with all O’s. Joined up with the Unthinkables just a few months after I came of age…”

“And then there was Greta. She was barely older than I was, but she was like a fucking force of nature, and I was like this stupid, star-struck kid. God, she kicked my ass around. And it was like having Dora back, from back when we were in first and second year, back before everything got all…horny and strange.”

“Greta was…I finally had someone to _talk_ to. I was…happy,” Charlie said, and his voice seemed so small, like _happy_ was something vast, like it dwarfed him entirely.

“And I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I fucked my way around. I was a _slut,_ Draco. I was…trying so hard to be _normal,”_ he said, spitting out the word like it hurt. “Because, you know…living a double life, chasing necromancers all over Romania by night, lying to my family the whole time, making them think I was just fucking around with dragons while they were busy fighting a war…because that was _all so normal.”_

He sounded so hurt it made Draco’s eyes sting.

“I tried so hard to just _fuck someone properly_ … I was out at the clubs every fucking night, like I had to prove something to myself. If I could score some Molly, get a good roll going, bump a little coke, I could get myself far enough out of my head that it wasn’t…”

He trailed off. Draco looked at him a bit wide-eyed; he’d spent enough of his Hogwarts summers with Blaise Zabini to know all about muggle clubs and the drugs that went with them.

“I’d have never pegged you for the ‘hooking up in a nightclub’ type,” Draco said, cringing as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

“I was exactly that type,” Charlie said, though his expression hardly seemed shamed. “I actually don’t mind the club scene, though I can do without getting high these days.”

It didn’t escape Draco that Charlie had just told him something that no one else knew; Charlie, who was always someone else’s big brother first and Draco’s mentor second, had let Draco see a part of him that even his multitude of siblings didn't know.

“Greta…she was fine with my lifestyle, but the drugs…became a problem. She told me to give it up or give up the Unthinkables. Which meant her. And, like the punk I was, I was pissed. Told her she should “loosen up a little.” The same shitty advice Dora had been giving me since we were in fifth year. The same advice that made me literally miserable. And of course, Greta laughed her ass off at me. Told me not to take sex so seriously. And it was a fucking _revelation,_ Draco. That single sentence saved my fucking _life. ‘_ Cause right up until she said it, I didn’t realize that was even an _option._ ”

“Later, I learned the word asexual. Greta was asexual. Asexual, aromantic, sex-repulsed, and touch-averse. Spent every evening we weren’t on an assignment reading in front of the fire, or practicing her Forms, or walking through the bluffs around the reserve. Never gave sex a second thought. It was…liberating, honestly. We’d go to shitty pubs and watch muggle football on the tellyvisions, and pretend we knew what the fuck they were all rooting for. We spent a whole assignment undercover as groupies for a metal band…I’ve still got a couple scars from the mosh pits…”

“The what?” Draco asked.

“Nothing. I’ll take you to a show one day. Makes more sense to experience it than for me to try to explain.”

“And you were…happy? Sex-repulsed? Touch averse?”

“Yeah. I’ll admit, the touch-averse thing was hard. You’ve seen how my family is. Everyone sort of…”

“Crawls all over each other?”

“Yeah, basically. But it was a boundary for her. So I accepted it. And I don’t regret it. She…I was in love with her, and she loved me very much, though not in a romantic way. Parts of that were hard, but I don’t regret it.”

“When you talk about her, you look like you’re dying inside,” Draco said, summoning his best impression of Gryffindor bluntness. “I’m afraid that you’re not over that, and that you’ll get involved with Severus and hurt him.”

Charlie looked at him, his blue eyes widening slightly.

“Draco. Once, before I’d really understood what aromantic meant, I told Greta I thought we were soulmates. That she was the other piece of my soul. You know what she told me?”

“No,” Draco whispered. “What?”

“She told me, “our souls have more than two pieces.” Part of me's always gonna be tangled up in her memory. I can’t change that. But it doesn’t diminish anything about how I feel for Severus. I don’t know if he even wants to be involved with me, and it may be that we don’t work out- he may decide he doesn’t want to be with me when sex is…complicated. It may be that we’re incompatible in other ways. But whatever happens between us, if it’s anything at all, it won’t have anything to do with Greta.”

“Alright,” Draco said. “I trust you.”

He let Charlie haul him to his feet gently, and there was a softness between them, even while they sparred, Charlie’s wooden sword knocking against Draco’s Side Guard, breaking through his Long Point with the ease of long practice. When they finally settled to meditation, Charlie leaned into him again, and the closeness was comforting, and he felt like he could understand what Charlie meant; there was something compelling about closeness without sex to come between them. He hadn’t realized how much he missed closeness- just touching someone for the sake of feeling something gentle.

He let his brain ease into the fog of meditation; he was walking up the stone steps again. This was nothing new. It was always the stone steps, whenever he meditated. He didn’t try to run up them; he knew they wouldn’t end. He let his thoughts drift to his own Hogwarts days. He’d been lonely at times, certainly. He’d been keenly aware of how unpopular he was outside his own house. But he’d been lucky. He’d come to Hogwarts with the friends he’d grown up with; they spoke the language of shared childhood; they knew how afraid they all were, and how to hurt each other, and how to comfort each other in the dark.

A memory drifted, murky and faded with time. It was their first year, probably only the second- or third-week in. Him and Vince and Greg, and Pansy, Blaise, and Theo. They were up somewhere high. Laying on their backs.

There was another flash of stone steps. The ground below them had been cold, even though it was hot that night. There were fireflies out, blinking between the stars. It felt good to be so close to his friends, crowded together as though in spite of the vastness of the castle. Looking up at the stars… _the stars! That was it!_

He jumped, sitting bolt upright.

“Charlie,” he said, startling the other man. “I know where the stairs go!”

“You found it, then?” Charlie asked. “Where is it?”

Draco squeezed his eyes shut. The memory of _that night_ threatening to spill over his white walls.

 _No walls,_ something inside him told him. _No walls. Go there. Go there and face it._

A shiver passed through him.

“Alright,” he whispered.

“Alright, what?” Charlie asked. “Draco?”

“I’ve got to…there’s somewhere I’ve got to go,” Draco said. He rose to his feet.

“Do you…want me to come with you?”

“Yes,” said Draco. “But I don’t think you’re meant to.”

“Be careful, then,” Charlie said.

He smiled at Charlie, and Charlie took his hand and squeezed it. He squeezed back once, quickly, then let go. And, taking a deep breath, he disapparated. When he landed, something inside him seemed to stir, like an animal waking from sleep.

When he walked up to the gates, he wasn’t sure they would open for him. But he ran his hand across the icy top of the heavy iron bars, and a shiver of awareness passed through him. The gates creaked open, and he wondered how he could ever have thought that this place was anything other than home. The sun was only barely up in the sky; they’d cut their PT unusually short. Everyone in the castle was probably just making their way down to breakfast. The grounds were deserted as he crossed them. And when he reached the bottom of the winding staircase and started to climb, there was dread in him, but there was also something strong.

The stairs were, by now, familiar. He made his way up them by muscle memory. When he made it to the top, he pushed the heavy oak door aside and slipped through it.

_Draco. You are no assassin._

_How do you know what I am? I’ve done things that would shock you._

_Forgive me Draco…your heart can’t really have been in it…Years ago, I met a boy who made all the wrong choices. Please let me help you._

_…I was chosen…I have to kill you…or he’s going to kill me…_

_Well! Look what we have here! Well done, Draco._

_Do it. Go on, Draco! NOW!_

_No._

_Severus. Please._

_Avada Kadavra!_

He could still hear the rustling of the old man’s cloak in the wind as his body fell. The memory had been kept sharp by years of nightmares.

“It was your fault, you know.”

His head snapped up. There, leaning halfway out the same massive, arched window that Dumbledore had fallen from, was a girl. She wore a silk nightgown. She was perched atop the window parapet, dangling bare feet out into the open sky. There was a great, angry red circle around her neck, and radiating outward, her skin was mottled purple. A rosary was clutched in her palm. She turned to look at him, and she had the same dark, tawny features as all the Black bloodline. She looked him in the eyes. Her eyes were grey.

“You let them into the castle. You got that old man killed.”

“Yes,” he told her. “Who are you?”

She laughed, but the sound was humorless.

“You’re not really here, are you?” he asked her.

“No one else can see me,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not here.”

“Er…alright, then.”

Charlie had said they were dangerous, but this girl seemed…sad more than anything else. He crossed the tower, sliding past the astrolabe, weaving around the rows of brass telescopes, until he stopped beside her, peering out through the window at the familiar grounds below.

“This is your home,” she said. “Your heart belongs here. But you caused a lot of hurt. You spilled blood on your own floor. You hurt people. You hurt yourself.”

“I hate this place,” he told her.

“You can belong somewhere and still hate it,” she said.

He thought of the Manor, and his mother, wandering the empty rooms.

“I know,” he said.

She was silent for a long time.

“Charlie said…Charlie said you’d try to kill me,” he told her. “You’re an aspect of the Forms, right?”

“Forms? I’ve got a form, but I’m not a form.”

“What are you, then?”

“A spell.”

“A spell? If I learn your incantation, you’ll fight for me?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t have an incantation. And I won’t fight for you.”

“Charlie said if I could beat you in a fight, you’d lend me your Form. You’re meant to fight for me! You’re a part of my own power!”

She giggled.

“Maybe so, but I’m not going to fight for you. Not with you, not for you. I didn’t fight for the Knight. I won’t fight for anyone.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to die again,” she replied easily. “Surely you can understand? You had the same choice once- fight for others and be killed, or let them die and save yourself.”

“It wasn’t just myself I was trying to save,” Draco said. “It was my mother and father.”

“And if it hadn’t been? If they had been safe, if it was only your life, would you have put it at risk?”

“No…” Draco whispered.

“Well, neither will I.”

And with that, she rose, and before he could reach for her, she dived off the parapet. He gasped, reeled back from the ledge, and squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the sound of fabric whipping around in the wind as she fell. But there was nothing; the only sound was a brisk but uneven gait, rapidly ascending the spiral staircase.

“Draco Malfoy!”

He whipped around.

“Professor McGonagall,” he breathed.

“Mr. Malfoy! Explain yourself,” she said severely.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have…I should have asked permission to come here. I wasn’t…sneaking around, or…”

“Mr. Malfoy. If you were any threat to this school, the wards wouldn’t have allowed you past. Come with me, my boy.”

“Er...yes, ma’am,” he said uncertainly.

He held out his arm politely, schooling the surprise out of his features when she took it and leaned on him, walking with a heavy limp.

“You’ll have to forgive an old woman,” she said. “This leg has long been bad, and I’m afraid I did it no favors during the war.”

They made their way down the twisting expanse of stairs and back to the entrance courtyard, and passing through the castle doors made something twist painfully in Draco’s chest. He could hear the din of breakfast in the Great Hall, and for a wild moment he was seized by the desire to walk through the doors and across the hall and sit down at the Slytherin table, and maybe if he did, it would be five years ago, and he could stop himself from doing anything that came after. But McGonagall, as though she could hear his thoughts, tightened her grip on his arm, leading them to the gargoyle that guarded the entrance to the Grand Staircase.

“Verisimilitude,” she said crisply.

“Yes, truly,” replied the gargoyle, sliding to the side. “Or then again, maybe not.”

Draco followed her up yet more winding stairs. He’d been to Dumbledore’s office on several occasions, hauled in with Vince and Greg over their bullying. He’d hated the man then, the way he’d never just shout at them, the way he made them sit there and _explain themselves_ and picked apart their motivations until they felt raw with something he hadn’t wanted to admit was guilt.

The office had changed a bit, Draco noticed. It seemed so much emptier without Dumbledore’s great, blazing phoenix preening the ash from its feathers on its perch above the mantle. The shelves of little metal trinkets had been filled mostly with books. There was a heavy tartan blanket draped across the back of a chair. Above the lintel hung a Celtic cross. Photos in frames were scattered about the shelves, squeezed between books, and Draco couldn’t quite stop the derisive snort that escaped his lips at the sight of Potter grinning out at him from one of them, his arms thrown around Weasley and Granger. Always Potter. Golden boy. Everybody’s favorite.

“Lemon drop?” she asked, jarring him from his reverie.

_Lemon drop._

He stared down at the bowl and tried not to cry. She arched a brow at him.

“This was my home,” Draco choked, trying to make her understand. “I spilled blood on my own floor.”

“That’s quite enough of that,” she said sternly. “What happened here- we would have fought that battle one way or the other, Draco, vanishing cabinet or not. It was fated to happen exactly as it did, and I do not say such a thing lightly, because I do not believe in anything as Presbyterian as fate. But Tom…Hogwarts meant too much for him not to try to possess it. Unfortunately for him, it meant just as much to the rest of us. There was never any doubt that Hogwarts would become a battleground.”

Draco looked up at her, blinking wetness out of his eyes.

“Possess it?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s a uniquely human sin, to confuse love with possession. But it’s far too early in the morning to discuss the nature of humanity, I dare say. Now, Mr. Malfoy, you’re welcome to use my Floo. Unless you had other business here?”

“No ma’am,” he said, recognizing the dismissal.

He took a pinch of powder.

“Professor?” he asked. “I’m…sorry. For all the hurt I caused here. Fated or not, I was…I’m sorry. I’m trying to be…better. And here seemed like the best place to start.”

“Draco,” she said, softening. “You’re always welcome at Hogwarts. If you’d like to visit any part of the castle, you need only to ask.”

“Thank you,” he said, throwing his powder into the fire and stepping into the flames.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you lovelies enjoyed this chapter! Can't believe how long this little baby has gotten, and thank you to everyone for kind comments, kudos, and moral support. You guys keep me inspired!
> 
> On a side note, some people were wondering about why Charlie left school early in this story. Due to inconsistencies in the canon timeline, there's a theory that Charlie left school a year early. There's a somewhat confusing explanation here: https://www.potterpedia.it/?v=Quidditch_Through_the_(Weasleys%92)_Ages_or_The_Unusual_Career_of_Charles_Weasley_by_Philip_Legge  
> if anyone is interested. 
> 
> As always, feel free to bug my bored ass on Tumblr: Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	51. Quick update!

Well hello there folks. This is, I am sorry to say, not a new chapter. This is a quick update to let all of you darlings know that I have not disappeared. My laptop had died. It's kaput. A brick. It has completed its journey down the river Styx. My laptop is no more.

And along with my laptop, the next four chapters of this story. The best part? My data can't be removed from my hard drive. So the chapters I had all written out (along with all my important stuff for work yay) is gone into the ether.

Woe is me. I say that completely unironically.

The good news is my computer was only 6 months old and still under warranty. The bad news is I had to ship it to the manufacturer so they can try to fix it. They've had it forever and God only knows when I'll get it back. So the next installment may be a bit delayed. In the meantime, I will be wailing loudly at the sky.

Thank you darlings for your patience. Please cross your fingers that I get my laptop back sometime before I die.


	52. Draco Malfoy and the Color Grey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well folks, I am FINALLY back. I ended up losing almost 50k words of this story due to my hard drive failing, so I am beginning the process of rewriting all of that. I have learned my lesson though. Now we back everything up in Google Drive.
> 
> In other news, I did not have the chance to celebrate this properly before my laptop died, but OUR STORY HAS ART! I'm posting it here, and I also went back and put it in chapter 12. The amazingly talented [@thisbloodycat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbloodycat/works) made glorious fanart for chapter 12!
> 
> You can check out more of their awesome art on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/thisbloodycat/618599540817313792)
> 
> Like can I just reiterate that OUR STORY HAS ART?! I'm still squealing :D
> 
> Now, please join me in celebrating the rebirth of my laptop with a long overdue new chapter of this story!

When Draco stepped back through the fire into the parlour at Grimmauld Place, the intention to run to Charlie and share his discovery was driven from his mind by the shouting match that was unfolding between his mentor and the pink-haired Auror, who he learned was Nymphadora Tonks, the woman who had once been Charlie’s best friend. But that wasn’t all, he realized. Her eyes were grey, like his mother’s, and by extension, like his mother’s disgraced sister’s. Nymphadora Tonks was not only a Black, but his cousin. He’d known this, in an abstract way, since he was young. Like Sirius, Andromeda Black had earned her own charred smudge on the family tapestry. But he hadn’t connected the woman to her name until he saw her eyes.

At first glance, she seemed to have none of the features characteristic of the Black family. Her skin was pinkish instead of olive-brown, she was boxy rather than willowy and slim, there was no telling whether the hair she was born with had been dark, and the sharp jaw and high cheekbones of the Black family had vanished into the plumpness of her heart-shaped face. The hereditary resemblance among Blacks was so strong that, when his own mother had been born with fair skin and light hair, his great-grandmother had suggested that, perhaps, his grandmother had strayed outside her marital bed. But his mother’s eyes, like the eyes of all of the line of Black, were the unmistakable grey. And that had been enough to put the family’s suspicions to rest. 

He watched Nymphadora Tonks gesturing emphatically, and Charlie looked furious, which was an expression so contrary to his typical, grinning humour that Draco stopped in his tracks. But she, to her credit, didn’t so much as blink. He knocked the dust off his boots and stepped out of the fireplace just as she stormed past him, snarling “Ministry of Magic, Head Auror’s office” into the emerald flames.

“What was that about?” he asked Charlie, striding over to him and ignoring the way Potter and Weasley’s eyes narrowed at the sight of him.

“Apparently,” said Ginny, setting a calming palm on her Charlie’s shoulder, “the werewolf attacks are a coordinated effort.”

“”Ginny!” Weasley hissed, looking between her and Charlie with a scandalized expression, “You can’t just talk about classified Auror-”

“Oh, bugger off, Ronald,” she snapped, cutting him off. “Everyone in this room was at the scene of both attacks, and none of us are stupid. There’s no way it’s a coincidence that a pack of werewolves just happened to be loose for two moons in a row.”

“It’s alright, Ron,” said Sirius Black, who was sprawled, bare-chested, in an armchair. “It’s not classified anymore. Look at the Prophet this morning- Skeeter managed to snooker them into a front-page spread of anti-werewolf propaganda.”

“What makes it propaganda?” Draco asked, startling a bit as all the eyes in the room suddenly remembered he was there. “That is, the attacks were real. The Prophet’s a rag, but they’re not wrong for reporting on it.”

“The issue is with the story itself. The facts were, unsurprisingly, inaccurate,” said Severus, who had been leaning against the wall in the shadows by the door. He strode into the room and took a seat at the end of an empty sofa, looking up in alarm as Charlie flopped down beside him. 

“The article implied,” Severus continued, “that the attacks are being carried out by the Union for Lycanthropic Prosperity, which is, as I’m sure you’re aware, patently ridiculous.”

“The ULP was co-founded by Hermione and Remus,” Black supplied, noticing Draco’s blank look. “It’s currently being chaired by the two of them, plus three other werewolves and Lavender Brown, who mostly acts as an envoy between the Union and Control of Magical Creatures.”

“Yes,” added Severus. “And the article seems to be setting up the attacks as a way to frame the organization as a terrorist group. It paints them as radicals pushing for some sort of werewolf supremacy. Which is utter drivel, of course. The ULP’s agenda can be idealistic at times, but calling them terrorists is a stretch, even for Skeeter.”

“The problem is,” Black jumped in, “That people already have an irrational fear of werewolves. They’ll have no trouble believing it, even if it is nonsense.”

“I’d hardly call the fear irrational,” Snape said flatly. 

“So you suppose all werewolves are subhuman, then?” Black asked, his tone going icy.

“Not subhuman,” Snape shot back. “But dangerous, all the same. Look at Greyback.”

“Greyback is an anomaly. Lycanthropy is well-controlled in the population-”

“Yes, well-controlled until you consider that the control is based on individual human whims!”

“So what, then?” Black snapped, his voice raising. “Should we keep murdering our seventh sons? Should we keep hunting them for sport, and fighting them in pits? Should we continue to force human beings to live on the edges of society, in abject poverty? Do you know they won’t treat werewolves at Mungos because even among Healers, who went through years of rigorous medical training, they don’t understand how lycanthropy is transmitted? Do you know most shops won’t allow known werewolves in? Because people think they can get it from just touching a lycanthrope, or eating at the same table as them, or shaking their hand-”

“Save your sermon, Black, obviously I am aware that you can’t catch lycanthropy by shaking someone’s hand. But you can’t deny that no matter how well-controlled the spread is, a lycanthrope will always be a risk. Look at how many victims Greyback claimed. HUNDREDS. Hundreds of people, ruined because one man was angry.”

“BEING A WEREWOLF DOES NOT RUIN A PERSON-”

“That’s enough from both of you,” Ginny barked suddenly, striding over to usher Black to a seat across the room. “You two can bitch at each other some other time.”

“The problem is,” she began, speaking over Black’s protests, “that Skeeter’s trying to play the attacks up as though the ULP is forming some sort of terrorist cell to purposely infect the general public. But that’s obvious bullshit because none of the werewolves the Aurory apprehended were even members of the ULP.”

“Not only that,” Charlie added, “But they were all newly-turned, and most of them were muggle vagrants. It was like someone had gone and rounded up a bunch of people no one would look for, turned them, waited for the moon, and set them loose.”

“What’s strange about the scenario,” Severus added quietly, looking away from Black’s face, “is that the method used to turn them is identical to that of Fenrir Greyback.”

“But Greyback is-”

“Dead, yes,” Ginny interrupted, a strange look crossing her face. “Remus used to know Greyback, years ago. He spied on him and reported back to the Order.”

“And according to Lupin’s reports,” Severus said, “Greyback’s modus operandi was to kidnap vulnerable people- homeless vagrants and travellers that no one would look for- and turn them. Then, he’d promise them shelter and safety in numbers as a part of his pack. Most of them would have no choice but to take up the offer, as he specifically chose victims with no resources, who were already used to living a transient lifestyle.”

“And all of these victims fit that description,” Ginny said grimly.

“Our theory, and the Aurory’s official position, is that the attacks are being orchestrated by Death Eaters,” Severus continued. “They would have a firsthand knowledge of Greyback’s tactics, and there are several lycanthropes who were members of the Death Eaters who were never apprehended after the Battle of Hogwarts. Although, as was my earlier point, any former member of Greyback’s pack could be responsible. All it would take is one person infected with lycanthropy to become angry enough with their oppression to tire of fighting it by peaceful means.”

“The other complication,” said Potter, speaking up in a resigned voice, “is that the attacks seem to be targeting certain people.”

“Certain people?” Draco asked.

“Yes. Before the first werewolf attack, the Patil sisters were ambushed leaving the shop they own in Diagon Alley, but it seems like their attackers were only expecting one of them to be there. They caused enough of a commotion fighting them off that the witch who owns the little cafe next to them heard it and set an entire tea service for twelve loose on the Death Eaters, and the twins managed to run next door to safety. Shortly after that, Seamus Finnegan was nearly stunned after walking his date home from a muggle cinema. Fortunately, he had a pocket full of Weasleys Whiz-Bangs, and when they stunned him, they hit one.”

“They multiply tenfold if you stun them,” Ginny added.

“Yes,” continued Potter. “He was able to injure his attackers by aiming a particularly vicious Catherine Wheel at them, but they still managed to get away.”

“Ron and I were investigating the attacks before we got kidnapped,” he continued, “And while we were gone, Hermione and Dean were attacked by werewolves. Then, Colin Creevey was actually kidnapped.”

Colin Creevey- the muggleborn with the camera...he’d helped Draco change his Galleons for muggle notes that day at Gringotts.

“Fortunately, Colin was carrying his coin, and he managed to call the entire DA for help. Neville found him a few hours after he’d been taken. He suffered from the Cruciatus Crush for a few days, but otherwise, he was fine.”

Draco cringed visibly at the mention of the Crush. He’d seen it happen more than once to Death Eaters who displeased the Dark Lord...hours of uncontrollable shaking, spasmodic pain, crippling nausea.

“What did they want from him?” Draco asked.

“Information,” Potter replied. “Wanted to know where other members of the DA lived.”

“The DA?” asked Draco.

“Dumbledore’s Army,” Potter replied. “It was a Defense group that Hermione organized, and the three of us led, back in sixth year, when Umbridge was trying to take over Hogwarts. When Ron and Hermione and I left, they became like a…”

“A resistance,” Draco supplied, remembering the fires and explosions that dogged the Carrows’ every footstep that first half of seventh year. He’d never have admitted it, but he’d been desperately thankful for the distractions. He’d hated the torture, hated the way it fell on children, even first and second years, but never him. He’d hated the relief he felt at each curse that passed him by. Every time one of the Carrows had to lower their wand to go chasing after some arsonist they wouldn’t catch, Draco had cheered quietly in his heart.

Potter’s mad friends had been behind it, then. But of course they had. Who else would it have been?

“Yes,” Potter continued. “A resistance. We communicated with these coins Hermione made. From what I read in Neville’s report, Colin was carrying his, and when he activated it, the whole DA went out looking for him. Fortunately, he was also wearing his press pass, which had a modified tracking spell that the Ministry uses to keep reporters from sneaking away from interviews and wandering into restricted areas. Luna realized the spell was still active and told Neville, and they found him within minutes after that.”

“And he was safe?” Draco asked, startling Potter with the question.

“Errr...yeah. He had the Crush pretty bad. Wouldn’t give up anything on the rest of the DA, so they kept torturing him. But he was sorted in a few days.”

Draco wondered how long after he’d run across the boy that he’d been taken, and he banished the mental image of Creevey’s easy smile twisting into agony forcefully from his mind with Occlumency. 

“And then, after we got back, the second werewolf attack hit Seamus’ family’s house.”

“Bit stupid on their part to do it while Seamus’ mum was home,” Weasley piped up, and the corner of Potter’s mouth quirked up in wry amusement.

“I’m sure you remember, but the Macmillans and the Boneses were attacked too. It’s clear they’re targeting members of the DA,” Potter said. “What’s not clear is why.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Severus finally stops ogling Charlie long enough to question the boys, Ginny does not play when it comes to her mentor, and Draco ends up with another mystery on his hands.
> 
> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


	53. Severus Snape and the Entirely Fair Accusations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally managed to get this chapter together. It's been a bit strange picking up where I left off, especially because I lost so much of what I had written, but I feel like I'm getting back into my groove, so yay! 
> 
> Coming up next, Draco and Charlie discuss the manifestation of Draco's Forms, Harry makes a plan, and Severus tries to get to the bottom of it all. Meanwhile, Theo and Hermione have a breakthrough, Draco crashes Luna's lessons, Sirius is surprisingly knowledgeable for a mass-murderer, and Pansy begins a slow takeover of the Ministry, starting with Harry's office.

He was a bit surprised that Potter had answered Draco’s questions directly given his penchant to be obliquely difficult over even trivial matters, but Severus tamed his surprise, lest it halt Potter’s loose tongue. He had been negligent in his mission to uncover the truth of the boys’ disappearance, but there was nothing else for it. 

Dumbledore’s Army...he’d been aware of the rather active resistance among the student body the awful year he’d assumed control of the school, but at the time, the various mishaps had seemed largely random. He’d been secretly grateful for the chaos, as it kept the Carrows on a permanent wild goose chase around the castle, too busy hunting shadows to torture the children. It had been a precarious stance; he had hated their cruelty, but every time he stepped in to stop them, he risked compromising the facade he’d spent over a decade crafting. He risked revealing himself and putting the entire Order at risk. The children had been collateral in the war between his persona and his soul. And so, he’d pursued the rebellion half-heartedly, silently cheering on whoever it was that was managing to evade capture at every turn. 

But now, looking back, it was almost too convenient, the way a fresh round of those mad fireworks would shake the walls of the castle just as Amycus or Alecto turned their wand on a victim. The stairways they climbed would reverse direction. The corridors would shift as they tread down them. Doors would lock behind them, objects would break, or spill, or explode the second they came near. Their possessions seemed to constantly vanish and reappear in high places. The acrid burn of smoke lingered in the air from the near-constant fires and explosions. And they never seemed to catch the perpetrators. 

It had been coordinated, Severus thought with astonishment. It had been Potter’s little gang.

And who among those dunderhheads had decided to name themselves Dumbledore’s  _ fucking  _ Army...God, the sheer  _ irony _ .

They were organized. They had waited for the Carrows to turn their wands on a fellow student, and they’d mounted an attack. The timing, the level of organization, the clandestine method of communication...grudgingly, Severus found himself impressed.

“Potter,” he said, crossing his arms and levelling the boy with his best imperious glare, “I believe there is an element to your list you’ve overlooked.”

Potter looked up at him flatly and quirked a single brow, and the expression was so reminiscent of James Potter that Severus had to slow his breath to calm himself. He stared at the boy’s eyes- the only safe feature on his face- and focused on the familiar green, as though he could somehow superimpose Lily over the James. 

“And what is that, exactly?” Potter asked.

It was clear by his careful tone that the boy was trying to maintain some semblance of neutrality. He had taken to coping with Severus’ presence at Grimmauld by more-or-less ignoring him, addressing him with bland politeness, and only when necessary. Not that Severus could blame him, given their history. He supposed it must be rather disconcerting to come home from being abducted by what may or may not be the living dead to find your childhood rival and your least-favorite teacher living in your house, and so he tried to muster up some civility for the boy. 

“I believe you’re correct about the pattern of attacks. It appears the members of your little...fan club,” he said, failing to repress a sneer, “are being targeted by what I believe to be the remnant of a Death Eater faction. But you’re failing to account for a critical piece of information.”

“Are you going to tell us what that is, then?” Potter said impatiently. 

“No,” Severus replied shortly. “I hardly have the time or patience to explain myself to you. Now, it is critical that you listen to me and follow my directions very carefully. I need you to recount to me, in as much detail as you can remember, the events that transpired the night you were abducted.”

“No,” Potter replied, echoing Severus pointedly. “If you want to know about the abduction, you can request a copy of our reports through the Aurory like any other civilian.”

He felt his temper rising- leave it to Potter to hold the very key to unraveling this lunacy and stand there holding it just out of his reach- but he took in another calming breath and refocused on the green of his eyes.

“I have,” said Severus very evenly, “Already done as you suggested, Mr. Potter, and read through your and Mr. Weasley’s reports. But as you were the ones that  _ wrote them,  _ I’m sure you’re aware that a significant amount of detail has been  _ omitted  _ from them, and it is  _ that  _ which I am seeking.”

Potter’s brows shot up, and Severus knew his suspicion had been on point- they had falsified their reports. Every eye in the room had fixed on Potter and Weasley- it seemed that this revelation had come as a surprise even to their inner circle. 

“Now, I do not have any further time for your insolence. Lives are at stake as long as the remaining Death Eaters are at large-”

“I  _ know  _ what’s at  _ stake,  _ Snape,” Potter barked. “I don’t need you to explain my literal job to me. And if you think you’re going to come swooping in here making demands of us like we’re back in the  _ dungeons,  _ you’re barking. You’re not an Auror. You’re not a member of the media. Go sit down, make yourself a cup of tea, do...whatever it is that you do with your life now, and leave catching criminals to the Aurors!”

Potter’s voice had risen, and he was leaning forward on the balls of his feet, held in check by Weasley, who had eased his shoulder in front of him. Severus sneered.

“Classic Potter,” he spat. “Looking for a chance to charge in and play the hero.”

“Oh, leave it, Snape. That line’s gotten tired,” Potter snapped. “Next you’ll be telling me I’m a spoiled, attention-seeking brat-”

“I hardly have to bother saying it,” he began, but Potter cut him off.

“Then you’ll tell me I’m arrogant, just like my father!”

_ “And I wouldn’t be remiss-” _

“Because that’s what it’s always boiled down to! It didn’t matter that I was eleven years old and had only just learned that magic existed, it was “Oh, Potter, you’re a dunderhead and you’ll never amount to anything,” Potter cried, dropping his voice down to a comically gravelly impression of Severus’ own. “A thousand points from Gryffindor for trying to protect yourself and your friends from near-certain death, Potter! Detention for a month for narrowly escaping the return of Voldemort, Potter!”

Potter was waving his arms, his impression of Severus having become a bit hysterical, yelling loudly enough to stir Lady Black in her frame.

“WHAT SCUM DARES BESMIRCH THE NOBLE HOUSE BLACK,” came a shriek from down the hall.

“ANOTHER THOUSAND POINTS FOR LOOKING LIKE YOUR FATHER, POTTER,” Potter shouted over her. 

“VILE FILTH CORRUPTING MY HALLS!”

“GO TO DETENTION POTTER, JUST BECAUSE I DON’T LIKE YOU!”

“WOE UPON MY LINE, WOE UPON MY HOUSE, BEARING WITNESS TO THIS VULGARITY!”

“And you can FUCK RIGHT OFF, YOU MAD OLD HARPY!” Potter bellowed, throwing himself through the door and sending a blasting charm down the hall with enough force to rattle the wall behind Lady Black’s frame. 

And with that, Potter stormed down the hall and up the foyer staircase, with Weasley trailing behind him looking distinctly alarmed.

“Well that was a productive conversation,” muttered Black darkly, jarring Severus back to his surroundings. “You really have a way with people, Snape, anyone ever tell you that? Really remarkable.”

And then Black turned on his heel and left, swearing under his breath as he went.

“You completely deserved that,” Ginny piped up. 

“Ginny, don’t be rude!” Charlie hissed.

“Not being rude,” she countered. “Snape was rude, not me.”

She whipped around, glaring up at him suddenly.

“You,” she growled. “You owe Sirius an apology.”

Severus stared at her, dumbfounded.

“If you actually believe I’m going to-” 

“I do believe,” she snapped, cutting him off. “I do believe you’re going to go tell him you're sorry because  _ he is your friend, Severus Snape.” _

“Black is  _ no friend of mine,”  _ he spat back, bristling.

“Yes he is,” she said, marching toward him with her hands on her hips. “He is your friend, even if you won’t admit it. Because if anyone else had said what you just said,  _ they would be a pile on the floor right now. _ ”

He blinked at her, caught off guard. What...had he said? He’d called Potter insolent, he supposed, but that was hardly anything new…

“It didn’t  _ ruin him,”  _ Ginny said, and she was speaking barely above a whisper, but she had that hellbent look on her face. “It doesn’t  _ ruin  _ people, Snape.”

Protectiveness. She was talking about Lupin. It struck him then, exactly what he had said. 

“Miss Weasley,” he said. “Ginny. I didn’t mean…”

“Didn’t you?” she asked. She watched him with a hard look, but the anger seemed to seep out of her at the use of her given name. 

“Remus is family to me,” she told him gently. “And I can’t even explain to you what Remus is to Sirius. Remus is not  _ ruined.  _ But that’s all you can see, isn’t it? His lycanthropy. Just like you can’t look at Harry and not see his dad.”

A familiar curl of anger surged through his belly at the accusation, but he took a deep breath and pushed it down. She had looked at him with the same protectiveness. She had piled food on his plate. She had fought beside him. Had trusted him to protect her and had taken it for granted that he trusted her the same way. It wasn’t a turn of events that he’d ever have predicted, but he had become unaccountably fond of Ginny Weasley. The disappointment in her gaze was...disconcerting. And Black...she was right, he realized. 

“We are all we have left,” Black had told him. 

He remembered the heat of whiskey in his belly and the heat of Black’s shoulder as he leaned against him, singing hymns to the cold marble of his brother’s grave. The weight of the words settled into him. 

“All we have left,” he muttered to himself.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing, it’s...You’re right, of course, Miss Weasley. I was out of line.”

“Call me Ginny, dummy,” she replied. “You did before.”

“Yes,” he said, his mouth quirking up in spite of himself at the way she made the slight sound fond. “Ginny.”

She smiled at him, gentle and sad, and an old and buried instinct to reach out to her scratched at the bars of his mind. But he stilled his hand- after all, how was he to comfort someone he’d just hurt? Was he meant to take her hand? To embrace her? To reach out and pat her on the shoulder?

She was watching him expectantly, and he realized that she had meant her missive literally- she intended to stare at him until he went and apologized. 

So, taking a deep, fortifying breath, he set about it. He excused himself and wandered the halls until he found Black, cloistered in the library.

He was leaned back against the arm of a fainting couch, his legs stretching across the length of it. When he saw Severus approach, he pulled his legs up to his chest, and it took a full thirty seconds for Severus to realize he’d done this to make room for him to sit. Severus sat at the opposite end of the sofa and regarded him, unsure of what to say.

He was still shirtless, clad in only a pair of sweatpants with the legs pushed up around his calves. He’d wrapped his arms around his knees, and he looked...tired, Severus thought. He looked small, sitting there hugging himself. Like a little boy. The thought made him uncomfortable.

“Black,” he began. “Is Lupin...all right?”

Black hesitated for a long minute, sighed, and said,

“He’s fine. Hermione’s with him. They went to petition the court to file suit against the Prophet on behalf of the ULP. Remus reckons them tying those Death Eaters to the ULP constitutes libel. Luna and Dean went too, as representatives for the Quibbler.”

“No, I mean...is  _ he  _ alright?”

“I think so,” Black replied. “He’s...you have to understand something about him, Snape. He’s... _ strong.  _ He always has been. He’s not like...he’s not…”

“Never thought I’d live to see Sirius Black at a loss for words,” Severus quipped drily, and Black grinned at him, the same honest, disarming smile that had drawn people into his orbit when they were children. Severus had thought it disingenuous, once. Beautiful, but fake. Now, seeing it aimed at him, he realized this was just how Black’s face looked. He let himself return the smile.

“Yes, I get like that about him,” said Black, after a time. “Lost for words, I mean.” 

His expression went faraway and soft, and Severus watched it for a moment, feeling uncomfortable, as though he was witnessing something private. 

“Black,” said Severus. “I misspoke. Earlier. I…”

“He’s not ruined,” said Black, cutting him off. “Nothing could ruin him.”

Severus watched the man with a quizzical expression, but Black had fallen back into his thoughts. Back when they were children, before he’d learned the truth of Lupin’s condition, the boy had been a source of great frustration- that anyone so sweet-faced and bookish and mild could match Severus spell-for-spell had grated on his nerves. If Black managed to best him in a duel, it was easier to swallow; Black had learned dark magic at his mother’s breast, after all. But Lupin was just some half-blood _.  _ And then, it was made clear. He was not a boy, but a creature, and the source of his uncommon power was fueled by the darkness in his curse. The animal in the man haunted Severus still, the bone-white glint of its teeth gleaming in his darker dreams.

“How do you look past that?” he asked.

“How do you not?” Black retorted. “If you knew him, you’d understand.”

They sat in silence for a time, until Ginny hollered up the stairs for Black to come down and take a Floo call, and Black padded off, leaving Severus to his thoughts.

“How do you not?” Severus asked aloud. 

When they were children, the four of those boys had been almost fanatically protective of each other. He supposed some of that was due to Lupin’s secret, but perhaps it was a trait common to Gryffindors in general. He’d seen it between the Golden Trio as well, and between Ginny and Longbottom, who had suffered under the Cruciatus rather than betray their friends to the Carrows. He wondered, entertaining a wave of bitterness, what it would have been like if he’d been sorted Gryffindor. He and Lily had been tight like that once. Maybe he would have been able to hold onto that bond. 

A prickly sort of loneliness draped over him, and he rose to his feet and resisted the urge to brush at his arms and chest. He could hear the muffled sound of Ginny yelling from the floors below, and the sound of Charlie’s deep, booming laugh, and he gravitated toward it, shutting the library door behind him as though he could trap the feeling of solitude inside.

He found Charlie back in the parlor, ushering Ginny through the Floo with a smacking kiss on her cheek, an amused sort of grin still lighting his features as she disappeared into the flames.

“Hey,” he said gently. “Did you talk to Sirius?”

“Yes,” Severus replied.

“Good,” said Charlie, as though that settled it.

He felt his cheeks heat, and it took him a moment to place the source of his discomfort as the apology itself- he’d grown up in Slytherin house, where an apology was taken as a sign of surrender, of submission. But like Ginny, who barreled straight at conflict as though she could beat it into submission with the force of her will alone, Charlie, too, seemed determined to drag his grievances out into the open. He regarded Charlie for a moment, then spit the sentence out before he could manage to overthink it.

“Narcissa- Draco’s mother, she’s...a close friend of mine- she told me once that I try to treat people the same way I treat brewing a potion,” he blurted.

Charlie shot him a quizzical look, turning away from the fire and settling himself onto a sofa. Severus hesitated- would it be presumptuous to sit beside him? Finally, he perched himself at the other end of the sofa, hoping Charlie wouldn’t take offense at the distance. 

“A sufficiently skilled potioneer must take into account the properties of individual ingredients,” he began. “The physical properties- viscosity, solubility, flash point, miscibility. And the magical properties as well.”

He paused for a moment; Charlie was watching him with a certain intensity, making it difficult to concentrate on much of anything else. 

“All of those properties interact individually,” he continued, forcing himself to tear his gaze away from the blue of Charlie’s eyes. “And sometimes violently. Certain ingredients, when combined, will produce a desired effect.”

He picked a freckle at the corner of Charlie’s mouth, and tried to focus on that.

“But, competing interactions can render the overall effect useless. Quicksilver, for example, has powerful purifying properties, but tends to be too toxic to have much use in purifying applications, unless one negates it by transmuting with white sulphur…”

He trailed off for a moment, his eyes drawn to the perfect cupid’s bow of Charlie’s upturned lips and realized immediately the folly of staring at the man’s mouth. There was a loose thread in the seam of Charlie’s shirt collar, and he refixed his gaze on that, taking a breath to dispel the hot flush creeping up his chest.

“Anyway,” he carried on, gazing determinedly at the thread, “the point is that each ingredient has clearly defined properties. They fit easily into categories, and individually, they all behave in predictable ways. The unpredictability occurs when they are mixed.”

His eyes wandered to the dip at the base of Charlie’s throat. There was a freckle there, too, in the dead center. He swallowed, sucked in a breath, paused.

“Narcissa told me once that I look at people that way. As though they all have clear properties that fit into neat categories. As though I can control the way people behave by controlling how they interact with, and when, and how.”

“Do you think she’s right?” Charlie asked.

“Yes,” Severus replied. “I’m certain that I do. I was...quite adept at playing people against each other. Stirring up the worst qualities in each of them, and turning them loose on one another. Finding their talents and drawing them out, using them up. It was...necessary,” he said. “But I believe your sister was correct in saying that I can’t look past Lupin’s lycanthropy. I can’t see anything but James Potter when I look at his son. I’ve come to view people...one dimensionally, I suppose. I equate them with their parts.”

“But people aren’t one dimensional,” Charlie said.

“No,” Severus agreed. “They aren’t. I don’t…”

He took a deep breath, ignoring the rising panic that inevitably accompanied introspection.

“I realize that Remus Lupin is only a werewolf once a month. I realize that Harry Potter is not the same person his father was.”

“But it’s hard for you to see them any differently,” Charlie offered. “It’s because you don’t really know them. You only know a few of their “properties,” I guess you could say. But you don’t really know who they are.”

“No,” Severus agreed.

“Do you want to?” Charlie asked.

“I...think so,” Severus said. “I think it will be...necessary.”

“Necessary?”

“Yes, I...realized something. After I went back to Spinner’s End, I realized that I…”

He trailed off, and Charlie leaned back into the sofa cushion, watching him quietly while he gathered his thoughts.

“It’s been empty there for years,” he finally blurted. “I used to believe I enjoyed the solitude, but after spending weeks at Grimmauld, I found that I…”

“Missed us?” Charlie asked, a bright grin spreading across his face.

“Well...yes,” he said. “And I...understand that Lupin and Potter are a part of your...assortment. We may never call ourselves friends, but I must at least attempt to bury our old incivilities. But, it’s as Black said. I don’t...know them.”

“So get to know them,” Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know about Lupin, but Harry seems to be a lot like my sister. He’s a bit hot-tempered, but he doesn’t seem to be too interested in sustaining a grudge. I mean...you should hear some of the shit the twins have done to him over the years, and he still loves them.”

Severus huffed a quiet laugh, and rolled it over in his mind. If he was being honest with himself, the decision to move beyond their past was entirely self-motivated. He’d told himself his whole life that he enjoyed his solitude, but in reality, solitude had been his only option because he hadn’t had any friends. He’d gotten used to having Charlie and Ginny around, even if the girl was a bit mad and overbearing, and he’d been delighted to be so close to Draco again, for the chance to repair the relationship he’d once had with his godson. But the lot of them came part and parcel, and he had no desire to come between Charlie and his family, who had adopted Potter and Lupin long ago. He had to put aside his animosity. It was no longer serving any purpose.

At some point in their conversation, Charlie had edged closer, and was startled out of his thoughts by Charlie’s fingers running through his hair.

“Sorry,” Charlie said immediately. “I don’t mean to be so handsy. I just sort of…”

“It’s alright,” Severus said, catching Charlie’s retreating hand in his own and holding it. “I...like it.”

“I was wondering,” Charlie began. “Would you like to-”

But the question died on his lips as the door burst open, and Draco scrambled into the room.

“Charlie, I found it! I found the- Oh, er...Sorry, I just...”

“Really impressive timing, Draco,” Charlie said flatly, a little smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He was still holding Severus’ hand, and Draco’s eyes were riveted to their entwined fingers.

“You’re worse than Percy, I swear. What’s got you all in a snit?”

“I’m not in a snit,” Draco said. “I found the...that thing we were talking about.”

“Oh!” Charlie cried. “You found it?”

“Yes, but I need to talk to you. It didn’t, uhm...didn’t go quite how you said it would.”

“Alright,” Charlie soothed. “Let’s talk about it. We’ll figure it out.”

He shot Severus an apologetic look, and Severus squeezed his hand.

“Go on and see to Draco,” he said. “I’ll be around.”

“Alright,” Charlie said. 

And he leaned forward and kissed Severus, quick and closed-lipped, and sprang up to jog after Draco before Severus could even process what had happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	54. Chapter 54: Draco Malfoy and the Girl Who He Knew From Somewhere Else

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back again, folks. Thank you to everyone who's still reading this beast. My updates may be more infrequent for a while because my job has gotten super hectic. Between the extended workdays and being in grad school, it's sucking up my whole life. Hopefully we can get through the corona madness so my job will settle down a bit. But while you're waiting for updates, you can ask me anything on Tumblr:
> 
> [Sally's Tumblr](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)

“She said she wouldn’t help me,” Draco said. 

“She wouldn’t help you?”

“Yes. She said she’s not a Form, and that she wasn’t going to help me because she didn’t want to die again.”

Charlie’s brow furrowed. He stopped mid-stride, his boots crunching in the snow, and hummed to himself thoughtfully.

“What does it mean?” Draco asked.

“No idea,” Charlie replied. “The place you found...can you walk me through how you found it? When you were meditating, I mean?”

“Well...I suppose I..didn’t really find it so much as it was just...there. I’d been walking up those damned stairs for weeks.”

“Mmmm, I remember you mentioned the stairs.”

“Yes, and after we talked earlier, I was laying there by you, and there they were again, and I just remembered…”

“Remembered what, exactly?”

“The tower,” Draco whispered.

“Hmmm?”

“The tower,” he repeated. “I remembered... back in first year, my friends and I would sneak up to the Astronomy tower every night after curfew. It was nice up there...empty and quiet and always cold. We’d huddle together, like we used to when we were kids.”

“Did you grow up with them?” Charlie asked. “Your friends, I mean?”

“Oh. Yes. I’ve known Theo since we were in diapers, and Pansy almost as long. We were about 5 or six when we met Greg and Vince- they were born on the same day at St. Mungo’s. Delivered by the same midwife. So they’d known each other literally since the day they were born. And Blaise...we met him when I was eight and Theo was seven. His mother moved in with her fourth husband right around the time I got my wand, and she met my mother at a charity gala and set us up on a playdate,” Draco mused. “I hated him the moment I set eyes on him, of course, because he was such a pretty little boy, everyone cooed over him. I was quite jealous.”

Charlie chuckled. 

“But you got over it, eventually?”

“Eventually, yes. He finally bought my allegiance by swearing to marry Pansy so I didn’t have to- not that we had much say in the matter. But he got down on one knee and wrapped a ring of braided clover around her finger and kissed her little hand like a courtly knight, and they’ve fawned over each other ever since.”

Draco smiled, lost in the memory.

“It was...strange, moving into the castle in first year. It felt so...predestined, and it was so big and crowded. We spent a lot of time sneaking off together, playing like we did back home. It was like we knew we were growing up. Like twelve was just one year too old to play Merlin-and-Morgana, or King of the Castle, and eleven was the last chance we’d ever get. We’d sneak up to the tower and lay there and look at the stars the way we used to lay in the field just past the Manor gardens and listen to Theo recite all the constellations and how they got their names. Anyway, when we were laying there meditating, it felt like...it felt the same way, laying next to someone warm with the chill in the air, and I just sort of...remembered it. The steps. They led to the tower.”

“Well, it makes sense, I suppose. A person’s internal landscape usually reflects a profound change or a deep significance. Most people never find that place, of course, because most people don’t go looking inside themselves the way we’re doing, but theoretically, everyone has one.”

“You said before that yours was the blufftop where we go to train,” Draco said. 

“Yeah,” Charlie replied. “We spent a whole summer trying to figure out how to get up there, me and Billy and Percy. When we finally figured it out, it was like...I dunno, it was like our own little world. No one knew where we were, not even mum. Billy taught us to fly up there on a broom he’d nicked from the back of that old supply shed on the Quidditch grounds- he was already at Hogwarts, then. Percy hated flying, but I loved it. I’d bundle him onto the front of the broom and hold onto him and go zipping around until he screamed, and Billy would lean back against the old crabapple tree and watch us and laugh. He started smoking in 5th year, and he’d sneak up there to roll himself a cigarette, and I’d make him roll me one too, even though I’d gag if I tried to actually smoke it. We used to do the same thing- lay back and look up at the stars. It was...probably the happiest I’ve ever been, back then, when it was just me and my brothers, hiding from the little ones. It’s…”

“It’s like that place is home, but it’s a home you can’t go back to,” Draco said, filling in the silence. 

“Yeah,” Charlie said, looking over at him in surprise. “That’s...exactly what it is.”

“I guess the Tower was like that for us once,” Draco said. “But...it’s also the place Dumbledore died. I was...there, when it happened. I was supposed to be the one to kill him, but...I couldn’t. Aunt Bella was... I didn’t have a choice. If I didn’t kill him, Aunt Bella would have punished me. But I couldn’t do it.”

“What happened?” Charlie asked.

“Severus. He saw me start to lower my wand, and he stepped in and killed Dumbledore before Aunt Bella noticed. I saw him fall. It was… I heard him hit the ground.”

“Well, I can see how the Tower became part of your landscape,” Charlie said. “You made a hell of a decision- to spare an old, dying man, even knowing you’d be tortured for it, or maybe killed.”

“Don’t make it sound like I was some kind of martyr,” Draco snapped. “I let Death Eaters into the castle. Dumbledore wouldn’t have been in that position in the first place if I hadn’t-”

“I know, Draco,” Charlie said. “I’m not saying there was anything noble about your actions. But we’ve been over this. You were a different person, then. And that night, when you lowered your wand...that was probably the first step you took in becoming someone else. Whatever you did that led up to that is irrelevant.”

“It’s not irrelevant,” Draco grumbled, but Charlie ignored him.

“So this woman. When you went to the Tower, she was…”

“She was there. Only, I’m not sure...I think I was imagining her. Or...I don’t know.”

“You weren’t imagining her,” Charlie said. “The Forms are physical manifestations of your own power. They’re not real in the sense that you and I are, but they are physical and tangible beings, and they can do quite a lot of damage if they manifest unchecked. When I manifested the Knight, he tried to kill me. My mentor had to beat him into submission, bind me, and drive him back into my subconscious before he could make it back to the Reserve and kill all the dragons.

“What?” Draco asked incredulously.

“I dunno,” Charlie replied, a bit sheepish. “There’s that whole thing with knights and dragons…Anyway, the point is, the woman you saw was clearly one of your Forms.”

“Well, she didn’t seem to agree,” Draco said. “She said she was a spell. And that she wouldn’t help me because she didn’t want to die again.”

“Again?” Charlie asked.

“Yes, there was...around her neck. It looked like she’d been…strangled, or hanged.”

“Oh God.”

“I know. She was a bit...I don’t know. I didn’t get the impression that she wanted to hurt me, per se. But she seemed...angry.”

“Hmmm. Well, there’s not a lot of resource material to draw from. The kind of Legilimency that we’re doing hasn’t been practiced in centuries, and what records we do have from Legilimancers mostly focus on how to find the internal landscape. It’s all a bit…”

“Metaphysical?” Draco asked, recalling convoluted texts that Charlie had dumped in with his magizoology readings.

“You could call it that,” Charlie said. “But there’s not a lot of literature that goes into what the Forms look like, or how they manifest. When my Forms manifested, they all tried to fight me for dominance. It was the same for Greta. But your Form...this woman. She didn’t try to fight you?”

“No. She didn’t have a bow or a sword,” he repeated. “And she didn’t try to attack me. She just...sat in a window and needled me about my life choices. Then, when she heard McGonagall coming, she jumped out the window.”

“She said she didn’t want to die again, but she jumped out a window?” Charlie asked.

“I didn’t say it made any sense,” Draco grumbled.

“Well, this is a complication, but there’s time to figure it out. You’ve come so far already. Just give it time.”

“Alright, but...what are the Forms? Everything you’ve told me, and everything I’ve read, has made it sound like they’re like...separate beings living inside me?”

“They’re not separate beings. Your Forms are your own power, manifested outside your body. If they lend you their power, you’ll take on their attributes- the Archer’s speed, for example, or the Knight’s strength. When you fight in one of your Forms, you become physically faster and stronger, and your senses change- you can hear better, and see in the dark. You can’t use magic, but you become impervious to spells that hit you. You can still be hurt with external spells- like if I conjured a massive rock and dropped it on your head, it would still hurt you- it doesn’t suspend the laws of physics. But hexes and curses can’t break through the spell. And you can deflect most elemental magic, depending on its form. Anything short of literal Fiendfyre can’t break through the Forms. Even the Killing Curse will just bounce right off you.

“I can be immune to the Killing Curse?” Draco asked, his eyes widening. “But I thought there was no way to deflect it besides a physical barrier-”

“That’s not exactly true. Using a Form makes you immune to the Killing Curse, but you wouldn’t have ever learned about it because this is magic that's been almost completely lost to time. And for good reason. It was designed originally as a weapon of war. Human weapons- that’s what the Forms were meant to create. You channel your magic into psychic energy that manifests the core of your power externally. That’s why you can’t cast spells- all your magic is going into the Legilimency used to keep the Form in a physical state.”

“So why don’t you use your Forms all the time? You’d be impervious to two-thirds of offensive magic?”

“Well, I can’t just stay in the Form. It’s extremely hard to maintain...It’s physically and mentally exhausting. Why do you think we’re always meditating? Why do you think we do so much endurance training? You think I get up at the ass-crack of dawn and go do PT every morning for fun? Fuck no; I’m not Ginny. But we have to be physically strong enough to keep the spell up. When you first use a Form, you’ll be lucky to keep it up for even a minute. I’ve been at this shit for years and I can only manage about ten minutes or so before I have to drop the spell.”  
“So they Forms are spells...the woman at the Tower...she said she wasn’t a Form. She said she was a spell. But if she’s my own power, why can’t I just...order her to help me? How is she able to refuse.”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Charlie replied, looking thoughtful. “But I have a theory about it. Once, when me and Billy were kids, I nearly got pulled into a lake by a grindylow. We were visiting my Great Aunt Muriel, and the edge of her property backs up to this massive lake, and Billy and I were playing on the bank. He was probably about eight, and I was six. Perce and the twins were still too little to be out with us, and mum had just put them down for a nap, so me and Billy snuck off to play before she could try to make us take a nap too. 

One minute I was digging a hole on the bank of a lake, and the next minute, there were these great, long, slimy fingers trying to drag me into the water. And Billy...he was just a scrawny kid back then, but I’ll be damned if he didn’t jump on that thing. I have dreams about it, sometimes...Billy’s little fists all balled up and just wailing on that great big slimy fucker. Grindylows are...bigger than an eight year old kid, and freakishly strong for their size...they can drag down a grown man. But Billy beat the fuck out of that thing with his bare little hands. 

Afterward, he went shrieking for mum and cried like a baby into her shoulder, but in that moment, he may as well have been invincible. I have a theory that most people have some kind of...deeper power inside them. But it only comes out when they’re desperate, like in life-or-death situations. Something inside you is stronger than even you know. That’s what the Forms are- they’re your own strength, but under normal circumstances, you can’t just draw on that strength at will. It only reveals itself in life-or-death circumstances. When you call on the Forms, you’re using a spell to call on that deeper power.”

Draco sat silently for a while, taking in the information. They had retreated to Charlie’s bedroom, which was somehow chillier than the rest of the house, and Draco curled into the thick, wooly blanket that Charlie had thrown over both of them. His mind was reeling with the idea of an eight year old Bill Weasley fighting off a fully-grown grindylow. Gryffindors...he’d always assumed their vaunted “bravery” was a polite way of labelling them as “foolish,” but now he began to wonder if there was something to it.

“Why do they fight you, then?” he finally asked.

“Because they’re trying to protect you from yourself. They’re a power that’s coming from a deep place inside you. They’ve seen the very worst of you, your darkest moments, the absolute worst of what you’ve been through, and they’ve kept you alive. If you’re calling on them to manifest and lend you their power, it must be because you’re in some kind of danger. When the Knight fought me, it was for dominance. He wouldn’t surrender my power to me until he knew I was at least as strong as he was because he wanted to know I could wield the power to protect myself.”

“But the power is your power,” Draco said, a feeling of frustration mounting in his belly. “What exactly were you fighting?”

“Myself,” Charlie said, as though he were stating something obvious. “I had to prove to myself that I could face down the worst and darkest of me before I could trust me to protect myself.”

“You sound like you’re barking,” Draco snapped.

“Yeah, well, I felt like I was barking back then,” Charlie said, grinning wryly. “I don’t really know what it means that your manifestation doesn’t want to fight you. But, she said she doesn’t want to die. Maybe it’s different for you. Maybe you have something besides yourself to overcome.”

“No,” Draco said. “That wasn’t quite it. She said “again.” She doesn’t want to die again. Charlie, I think...those marks around her neck….something happened to her. I think someone killed her.”

“Well damn, Draco..whatever that’s supposed to mean about your subconscious, it sounds like some heavy shit.”

“No, I don’t...I know this is going to sound crazy, but she seemed so...familiar. It was like I knew her from somewhere.”

“Draco, you’re talking about her like she’s a real person.”

“Yeah...I guess that sounds a bit mad.”

“Just focus on training and meditation, OK? She’ll reveal herself again, or if not her, maybe one of the other Forms. You said she didn’t carry a weapon- that probably means she’s your Monk.”

“Alright,” said Draco uncertainly.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong with the woman, that she needed help somehow. Like he was supposed to have been looking after her, and he’d somehow failed. Part of him wanted to hunt her down, wanted to go racing up the steps again until he found her so he could see with his own eyes that she was alive. But another part of him found the woman unnerving. There was something sad about her, but there was also something dangerous. He remembered the way the hair on the back of his neck had stood up at the sight of her.

“And anyway, you should be proud of how far you’ve come- seriously, it took me years to get to where you are now. You’re doing really well, Draco, honestly. I’m proud of you.”

His face flushed, embarrassed but pleased.

“Alright,” he said again.  
Charlie was right. He needed to keep up his meditation; if he could find the woman again, maybe he could get some kind of answers. Charlie had already dropped into his own landscape; Draco could tell by the way his magic gathered around him, calm but with the edge of power glinting beneath the relaxed surface. He closed his eyes and pictured the Tower, ascending the stone steps with the knowledge that this time, at least, he knew there was someone waiting for him at the top.


	55. Severus Snape and the Words That Went Unspoken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In today's installment, poor Charlie tries his very best to ask Severus out and is thwarted at every turn. But, they catch up with some old friends, run a few errands, do some Christmas shopping. So all's well that ends well... or does it?

Severus’ brain didn’t catch up to the kiss until Charlie was already out the door, and he sat in a brief daze, struck by the way the familiarity of a quick peck on the forehead felt somehow more intimate than anything else they’d done. He could feel his face heating; other than Narcissa, who would greet him with a kiss if no one was around, he was unfamiliar with casual affection. Before he could dispel the emotion, which managed to be both pleased and embarrassed at once, Lupin and Granger burst through the door, embroiled in what appeared to be a bit of a row, and immediately fell silent at the sight of Severus sitting alone in the room blushing to himself. This, of course, made him blush deeper. Before he could excuse himself, Lupin pinned him down with a dutiful, “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Severus replied, flattening his tone and biting back the urge to lash out in his unease. He’d only just told Charlie that he’d find a way to get on with the man, and he intended to do it. He plastered on an expression of blandly polite concern that would have made Narcissa proud.

“I could ask you the same,” he said. “Black mentioned you’d been dragged into a…political matter?”

His bid to redirect their attention worked masterfully; Granger wheeled around, eyes narrowed, and practically barked at him.

“Political…a political matter? It’s a three-ring circus, honestly-”

“It’s alright, Hermione, really,” Lupin soothed.

“It is not alright! It’s blatant, and discriminatory, and I have half a mind to file a petition with the Wizengamot for libel-”

“Hermione, please. You’re hardly a solicitor-”

“I don’t need to be a solicitor to file suit, Remus! The Humans and Sentient Entities Act of 1763 amended the Third Article of Governance to guarantee any self-aware being the right to represent itself in court-”

“You’re not going to teach yourself Wizarding law overnight to file a frivolous lawsuit-”

“It isn’t frivolous!”

She rounded on Severus.

“Rita Skeeter’s gone and written in that absolute rubbish-fire masquerading as a newspaper that Remus himself is somehow orchestrating the werewolf attacks, and now the complete buffoons in the Control of Magical Creatures department are trying to order Remus in for investigation!”

Severus took a deep breath and roundly silenced the part of his brain that felt that it wasn’t an entirely unreasonable precaution.

“An absolute load of nonsense,” he said stiffly, trying to muster an appropriate tone of outrage. “Lupin may be…a lot of things, but a Death Eater is not one of them.” 

This, at least, Severus could say honestly.

“Even the dumbest among those quill-pushing dunderheads ought to find that accusation preposterous,” he continued.

“That’s exactly right!” she shrieked, finally having found a sympathetic audience. “It’s unconscionable! And it’s illegal- Creatures doesn’t have the right to summon or detain. And they tried to drag the Aurory into it, but fortunately Dora Tonks took it straight to Kingsley before that idiot Robards could agree to it.”

“As she well should have,” Severus agreed, nodding along. 

He turned and caught Lupin’s eye, noticing the man’s careful blankness of expression- he was occluding, Severus realized, to keep himself in check in front of Granger. He felt an unexpected twist of sympathy.

“Lupin. I’m sure that Miss Granger is more than capable of fending off any sort of bureaucratic injustice that may befall you, but as I was subjected to interrogation under Veritaserum before the full Wizengamot to reveal a comprehensive list of all persons in service to the Dark Lord, they should be well aware that you were not among them. A fact which I shall be happy to recall, should you require my support,” he finished gruffly.

“Er- thank you, Severus. Your confidence is…that is, I am grateful for your support,” Lupin said, the surprise clear on his face.

“That would be brilliant, Professor,” cried Hermione, beaming at him. “Maybe I could show you some of the notes I’ve made on the-”

“Oh, please don’t say you’ve already started researching this, Hermione!”

“-on the case,” she continued, undeterred. “I’ve got to run back out, I’ve made an appointment with an attorney- and before you say anything, Remus, it’s only Justin. You remember Justin Finch-Fletchley, he was a Hufflepuff in our year.”

“Of course, but-”

“Well I’ve consulted with him a few times on the legality of a few new bits of anti-lycanthrope legislation, and when he heard what happened, he owled straightaway and offered to represent us. Pro bono, of course, and we’d be mad not to take him up on it, he was the one who finally got Ringwold and his lot to abolish the Creatures of Subhuman Intelligence System and reclassify vampires and werewolves as Sapient Beings. We could do a lot with his help. I’d better go, but I’ll let you know how it goes.”

She left without waiting for a response, and Lupin huffed out a humorless laugh at her retreating back. 

“Lupin, you look like you could use a cup of tea,” Severus said. “I was just about to head down to the kitchen and put the kettle on, if you’d like to join me.”

Lupin eyed him with not-quite-veiled suspicion, and Severus felt his temper rising, but he took a deep breath and let it pass. Lupin was hardly out of line for noticing the change in his behavior- it was exactly the sort of observation that he, himself would have picked up on, and Severus remembered that Lupin, too, had been a spy.

“I will refrain of any mention of politics, Lycanthropic rights, the shortcomings of bureaucracy, or Wizarding law,” he offered flatly, and Lupin offered him an unexpected, wry smile.

“Quidditch and the weather then?” he asked.

Severus offered him a curt nod, and they walked to the kitchen in an awkward sort of silence.

The old uncertainty of navigating the kitchen in a house that didn’t belong to him had passed some time ago; he had quickly learned his way around, but as they pushed through the heavy, swinging door they found Kreacher already pulling a freshly-whistling kettle off the stove. Severus paused, eyeing the creature- it was a bit strange, for a house-elf. Most of them seemed to trip over themselves to serve, but this one seemed to appear at random, and he seldom saw it actually doing any cooking or cleaning.

“Misters have come down to the kitchen,” Kreacher said, levitating the steaming water and summoning two more cups from the cupboard with an outstretched finger. “Are misters wanting some tea and biscuits?”

A tray of hot biscuits appeared with a pop in the center of the table, and the kettle began pouring itself. 

He sat at the table across from Lupin and watched the elf fussing with the other man’s tea. 

“Mister Remus is needing to take his vitamins, oh yes he is. Mister Remus is avoiding Kreacher two days now, and the moon is coming soon.”

“Yes, thank you Kreacher,” Lupin said, a close-lipped smile, fond but exasperated, tugging at the corner of his mouth. 

“And Mister is needing his vitamins too,” Kreacher said, snatching Severus’ cup before he could wrest it away and dumping in a splash of milk-white liquid. “It is helping his complexion, sir.”

Lupin stifled a laugh, and Severus glared at him, watching him obediently sip from his cup.

“You may as well drink it Severus, he’s probably been dosing your food since you got here. It’s not bad, anyway. Bit of a bitter taste, but you get used to it.”

Kreacher’s face twisted up into something that Severus assumed passed for a smile, and he took a hesitant sip. The chalky, earthy taste of minerals, the astringent bite of echinacea and goldenseal, milk thistle to cleanse the liver, ginko to aid memory and concentration, and… yohimbe…commonly used as a sexual stimulant…really, where on Earth had Black’s elf learned…?

As though reading his mind, Kreacher piped right up.

“Kreacher is making his own special recipe, passed down from his great-great-great-grandfather. We has been serving the House of Black for many generations. Many, many generations.”

“I can see why,” Severus grumbled, gulping the rest of his tea and refilling it before the elf could get any ideas about slipping more of his “special recipe” in. 

“Well,” Severus thought, “That explains the sex magic.”

Lupin sipped from his cup, happily oblivious, and Severus buried the information in the very darkest corner of his mind and resolved firmly never to think about it again.

“Kreacher is going to find Master Sirius now. Master Sirius thinks he is sneaky, hiding in the wardrobe from Kreacher, but Kreacher knows better, oh yes. Master Sirius is taking his vitamins now, oh yes he is.”

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate all the trouble you went to, Kreacher,” Lupin said, his eyes crinkled at the corners as though trying to keep from laughing.

Kreacher padded from the room, a tea service and a decanter of the potion floating in the air behind him. Several minutes later, there was a crash from somewhere upstairs, and the sound of yelling.

“They’ll be fine,” Lupin said, observing Severus’ alarm. “Sirius will fight for a few minutes, then he’ll give up and take the vitamins.”

“I’ve never seen a house elf be quite so…combative,” Severus said cautiously. Whatever odd sort of grudging obedience Kreacher the House Elf seemed to wield over Sirius Black was clearly shared by the rest of the house, and Severus didn’t want to offend Lupin after managing almost 10 whole minutes straight of civil conversation, but he was genuinely curious. 

“Oh,” Lupin replied, offering Severus another wry smile. “Kreacher raised them, you know…Sirius and his brother, that is. Once they were out of diapers, Walburga saw to their education and etiquette, but it was Kreacher who really took care of them- fed them and gave them baths and all. Sirius has a bit of a complicated relationship with him, I’m afraid. It was… It isn’t really my place to discuss his childhood, but it’s safe to say that Sirius’ parents could be quite cruel. It must have been hard for a little boy to accept that his caretaker stood by while Walburga punished him, only to tuck him into bed later. He was too young to understand things like elf-magic and oaths of servitude.” 

That answered a long-forgotten curiosity- Regulus had always been unaccountably fond of his elf. He’d summoned it up to the dorm they shared with the Lestrange brothers nearly every night, and he would’ve been teased for the way the batty little thing insisted on tucking him into bed with a hot water bottle if it weren’t for the fact that it brought a massive silver platter of biscuits and a pitcher of hot cocoa along with it at every visit. 

“They had a rough go of it at first,” Lupin continued, “but when Sirius found out about the locket, they managed to put aside their differences.”

“The locket?” Severus asked.

“Ah…if you want to know about that, you’ll have to ask Sirius, or Kreacher himself. It wasn’t my place to have brought it up.”

Severus took a deep breath, brushing off his annoyance. Lupin looked a bit guilty, and part of him was tempted to try to ease the secret out of him, but he wasn’t sure exactly how capable an Occlumens Lupin was. Getting caught in the man’s mind uninvited was a surefire way to kill any hope of remaining civil, and he’d told Charlie he would try. He poured himself another cup and passed the kettle to Lupin. The silence between them was uncomfortable still, and he wished there were someone else in the room with them to help move the conversation. As if sensing his discomfort, Lupin tried to strike the conversation up again.

“You were friends with Regulus at school, if I remember right. And Narcissa Black?”

“Yes,” Severus said, freezing instinctively at the mention of Regulus’ name. They’d had to be so careful back then not to be caught out. He’d been lucky that Narcissa had been too preoccupied with Lucius to pay much attention to them, or she’d have known immediately. Even after all these years, just being made to acknowledge Regulus’ name out loud sent his heart straight up his throat.

“You might like to ask Kreacher if he’d show you the Black family album. He’s put himself in charge of it, and he’s right proud to show it off. He’s got photos for centuries back, but you might like to see Sirius and Regulus’ baby photos, and the ones of the Black sisters, too. They were rather sweet-looking children.”

“I would…like that,” Severus replied, surprised at the offer. “I don’t suppose you had much chance to know Regulus or Narcissa, but they were… I was close to them,” Severus said.

Lupin looked up at him with the tilted-head expression that Severus knew meant he was about to ask an uncomfortable question, but just as he opened his mouth, Severus was saved by Charlie, who chose that moment to walk through the door. 

“Oh, hullo Severus. Remus.”

Severus looked up at Charlie, then back to Lupin just in time to see a mild politeness wash over his face. He knew that look; he’d been on the receiving end of that look many times. It was the way Lupin looked at people he didn’t particularly care for, but also didn’t want to upset, and Charlie’s easy smile was just a bit tight. He watched them for another moment before Charlie interrupted him.

“Er… Severus? I was about to head into town, and I thought you might want to join me? I’ve set Draco to reading his Bestiary…he has a XXX classifications exam coming up, and he’s rather stressed about it, so we should be able to finish our conversation from earlier in peace.”

The tug of awareness at the lie registered dimly in the back of Severus’ brain. Draco had never once been stressed about an exam; the boy had been secretly a bit of a swot. He’d consistently scored third in his entire year in marks; right behind Hermione Granger and Theodore Nott. It would have been a lie to say he wasn’t desperately curious about what Charlie and his godson were doing. And, unlike Lupin, he was certain that Charlie wouldn’t have the skill to detect legilimency. But again, he stilled himself. 

He’d once thought legilimency to be his right. He’d spent years training his mental discipline, until not even the Dark Lord himself could penetrate it. If he could learn to protect himself, so should everyone else. Anyone who didn’t have the skill to defend their secrets didn’t deserve to keep them. He’d thought that right up until he’d had to interrogate Charity Burbage.

She knew she was going to die. When he entered her cell in the dungeon of Malfoy Manor, she’d had the resignation written across her face.

“He’s going to kill me,” she said.

She was sitting on the edge of a narrow cot. Her hair was dirty. There was a streak of dried blood flaking off her tawny cheek.

“Yes,” Severus had replied.

“And you’re not going to stop him, are you Severus?”

“No. We both know I lack the skill to defeat him.”

“So you’ve just given up, then?” she asked. “You just throw in your chips with whatever side looks like it’s coming out on top? Don’t you have anything worth fighting for?

”No.”

“What…what about the children, Severus? You’ve raised them since they were eleven! Don’t they mean anything to you?”

“What would you have me do, Charity?”

“Die for them,” she cried. “Die for them, like I am!”

“And what good will it do?” he replied calmly. “They will die, whether I forfeit my life or not. Any man, woman, or child who refuses to join the Dark Lord will die.”

“You’re wrong,” she replied. “Dumbledore will stop him.”

“Dumbledore is a tired old man. He’s powerful, and yes, he may be the only wizard alive who can best the Dark Lord in an open duel. But he’s tired, Charity. He cannot carry on fighting forever. The Dark Lord will outlast him.”

“He believed you, you know. He truly believed you were his friend.”

“I know.”

“I believed you, too. We were never…close, but… I always thought…”

“You were wrong. I have served the Dark Lord since the day I was marked, and I will continue to do so until I die.”

She tilted her chin up to search his eyes. Her brown eyes filled with tears.

“What do you want from me?” she asked.

“Information,” he said. “The name of the editor who printed your Prophet article.”

“I’m not going to tell you,” she told him. “Even if you torture me. I know I’m going to die. I’m not going to tell you.”

“I’m not going to torture you, Charity. Despite what you may think, I am not a cruel man. I have other ways of retrieving that information.”

“Legilimency, then? You think that’s less cruel?”

The comment struck him as strange, but he flattened out his surprise, watching her with narrowed eyes.

“You’d force your way into my mind, even without my consent? You’d force yourself on me, and you don’t call that cruel?”

It was the last time he’d broken into another person’s mind. He felt the loss of it, still felt the tug of curiosity when he was faced with a lie by omission, or a kept secret, but he couldn’t call up the spell from inside himself without calling up the memory along with it.

After he stopped using legilimency, he came to realize how much he’d relied on it. It was like losing one of his senses. But again, he refrained. Charlie was… his friend? Or…something like that. He couldn’t just go rooting around in his mind. Whatever it was that Charlie was keeping from him would have to come out on its own time.

He paused and looked up, and became distinctly aware that both Charlie and Lupin were looking at him curiously.

“Yes,” he said suddenly, realizing that Charlie had been asking him a question, and had been expecting a reply the whole time Severus was caught up in his thoughts. 

“Yes,” he said again. “That would be… yes.”

It took him another full minute, after following Charlie out of the kitchen and down the hall toward the parlor Floo, to remember what he’d agreed to.

“Where, exactly, were you planning on going?” he asked, alarm rising in his chest. 

“Oh, you know… Diagon, probably. It’s only a week until Christmas, you know, and I wanted to pick up a few presents. And… I was hoping you might like to… er… join me for lunch?”

“Well yes, but…”

Join him for lunch? As in…join him... together? 

Charlie was watching him, patiently waiting for the second half of his sentence, and Severus felt his cheeks coloring for the second time in an hour, not quite sure how to ask the question without sounding presumptuous. And then there was the problem of being in public- people tended to take exception to seeing former Death Eaters wandering through the streets.

“That is,” he said, “I cannot… I don’t typically travel in Wizarding spaces unless I’m under Polyjuice.”

“Er… OK, but, uhm… why?” Charlie asked, his head tilted just to the side.

“I cannot… Surely you realize that…”

Charlie stared at him, brow wrinkled in confusion.

“Oh, don’t be obtuse,” Severus snapped, feeling his temper rising. 

He jerked up the sleeve of his robes, and thrust his marked arm beneath Charlie’s nose. 

“I am a Death Eater, Mr. Weasley, or have you forgotten that whole business about the war-”

“Don’t start the “Mr. Weasley” bullshit with me, Severus. I’m not your student, and I’m not a child. I remember the war pretty well, thanks.”

Charlie stepped closer, into his space, wrapping a massive hand around Severus’ wrist and turning it to look down at the mark. There was a rough edge to his voice, harsher than Severus had ever heard it.

“I… apologize,” Severus said. “I was…”

The end of his sentence was lost. Charlie was still holding his wrist in a grip that made him remember, with a prickling sort of awareness that crawled up his back, exactly how much bigger Charlie was than him. The chill raised the flesh on his arms, and Charlie didn’t miss it, smiling darkly at the way his hair stood on end, and for a moment it was as though Severus were looking at an entirely different person. Then, as quickly as it had come, the hardness passed, his smile softening and his grip turning gentle. He rubbed a thumb back and forth over the flesh beneath the mark, looking back down at it contemplatively.

“I guess it hasn’t been easy for you,” Charlie said softly.

“I am not welcome,” Severus said. “I am a Death Eater. Regardless of when or why my allegiance changed, I was, at first, a Death Eater. I took the Mark willingly. I am not welcome in Wizarding spaces”

“That was in the First War,” Charlie said. “You fought for the Order. You-”

“It doesn’t matter, Charlie,” he replied, lowering his voice to match Charlie’s own. “I killed Albus Dumbledore. That is how I am remembered.”

The thumb on his wrist stopped, and then Charlie’s hand was cupping his cheek and pulling him down, and Charlie was kissing him, and he leaned into it, letting Charlie’s hand slide up into his hair and tangle there.

“Severus. Fuck your Polyjuice, and fuck anyone who looks at you twice. Come with me. Come and keep me company while I do my shopping and get lunch with me, and if anyone even thinks a word against you, I’ll set them straight.”

“Alright,” he mumbled into Charlie’s lips, “Alright. I’ll go with you.”

“Yeah?” Charlie asked.

He kissed Severus again, drawing it out until he couldn’t keep the smile off his face anymore, and when he pulled away grinning, Severus couldn’t quite help the way his lips curled up in response. 

Uncertainty tugged at him as he watched Charlie disappear into the emerald flames, but he pushed it down and followed him through, his head still spinning from the way Charlie’s hands had felt around his wrist and against his cheek and tangled into his hair. 

The dizzy, floating feeling lasted until he stepped out of the Floo into the crowded middle of the Leaky Cauldron, and every pair of eyes in the room seemed to turn on him at once. He tensed, his fingers twitching toward his wand, but Charlie returned the stares with a dark glare- he placed a hot, heavy hand against the middle of Severus’ back and steered him toward a pair of open stools at the bar, scooting one stool up against the wall and ushering Severus onto it. It took him a moment to realize this had been intentional; while Charlie seemed perfectly happy perched at the bar with his exposed back facing the room, Severus’s back was to the wall, and he could easily watch the entire room while still talking to Charlie. The gesture warmed his cheeks a bit, and he pushed down the feeling of mounting panic. This was a patently terrible idea, and he was still convinced it would end with drawn wands, but an envy-green longing overrode his sense of self-preservation. He wanted it to work, he realized, looking over at Charlie, who had caught the eye of Tom the barkeep, and was grinning toothily. He wanted to be out with him, he wanted Charlie’s hand on his back, wanted to walk with their shoulders close, wanted to lean in when he spoke to him, wanted their hands to brush, wanted everyone watching to know they had come here together. The twist of sophomoric possessiveness was so unexpected that he was suddenly embarrassed, and he had to remind himself that no one could see what he had been thinking but him, occluding out of force of habit. 

The thick silence that had settled over the crowded pub at his entrance began, gradually, to fill in, and he could still feel eyes on him, but after a minute or two, the hum of conversation hung in the air again. It was busy enough that Tom had charmed a parchment and quill to fly about the room taking orders. He was a bit amused to find that it had Charlie’s lunch order- Shepherd’s pie- already memorized, and he put in for an order of the same. Their lunch, which floated over the din of the lunch crowd and settled itself on the bar in front of them, gave him an excuse to ignore the sound of whispered conversations around him. 

They ate their meal in silence for a few minutes, which Charlie seemed to be strangely comfortable with. As often as he was completely immersed in a conversation, hands waving, head thrown back laughing, a grin stretched across his handsome face, he was just as likely to sit in a sort of contemplative hush. He’d been a bit like that as a child- quiet, bookish, clearly painfully shy. He’d outgrown the awkwardness but retained the introspection, and it looked good on him, Severus thought, the set to his jaw and the faraway look in his eye. He wondered what Charlie was thinking about.

“Hey, uh… Severus?”

He blinked at Charlie, jarred out of his thoughts and aware he’d been caught staring by the way Charlie’s lips quirked up in amusement.

“I was thinking, would you… oh, hullo Tom.”

He stopped mid-sentence to flash a smile at Tom the barman, who’d shuffled over now that the lunch crowd was beginning to thin out to clap Charlie on the back.

“Been wonderin’ when yeh’d be back through,” Tom grumbled. “Yeh jus’ missed Hagrid- he was in this mornin’ and he mentioned yeh were in town.”

“Yeah, I’ve been back for a while now- meant to stop by before now, but you know how it goes.”

“That I do, son,” Tom nodded sagely. “And Severus. Well now, we haven’t had Severus in for… what’s it been, son?”

“Years now, I think,” Severus replied softly.

Tom regarded him for a moment, as though searching his face to see how the years had changed it. There was a curiosity in his gaze, but no malice that Severus could detect, and he felt himself relax a bit. Tom, satisfied with his appraisal, grunted an affirmation, then bent to dig around beneath the bar. He emerged with a dusty-looking bottle and slid it over to Charlie.

“Fishy Green,” Tom supplied, levelling Charlie with a wry sort of expression. “Gots teh keep ‘em around just for this one. He’s the only one what drinks ‘em.”

“Thanks, Tom,” Charlie replied, grinning apologetically.

“And it’s a muggle ale for Severus, if memory serves. Newcastle, weren’t it?”

“Yes,” Severus replied, peering down at the foamy mug that Tom slid him in surprise. “Thank you.”

He hadn’t been to the Leaky Cauldron since the First War, when he’d only just been old enough to drink, and had asked for Newcastle because his father drank it, and it was the only beer he could identify by name. Tom grunted again, and shuffled away to fill up an empty mug that a rather haggish-looking witch had pushed in their direction.

“Fishy?” Severus asked, watching Charlie pop the cap off the bottle on the corner of the bar. “I’ve never seen anyone drink that on purpose.”

“You can blame that on Aberforth,” Charlie said. “He refuses to sell me Dragon Scale…says I’ll turn into a stereotype.”

“Ab’s an idiot,” Tom grumbled. “And Fishy’s swill. Don’t see how you drink it.”

“It sort of grows on you after a while,” Charlie replied.

Tom filled up a mug of his own with Wizard’s Brew and sat with them for some time, chattering away in his slow, steady rumble, gossiping about their mutual friends, some of which Severus recognized. Skye Parkin- she’d been a student of his, a couple years ahead of Charlie and sorted Ravenclaw- was resuming play as star Chaser for the Wigtown Wanderers after a long maternity leave. In a patently unsurprising turn of events, she’d given birth to a pair of twin daughters by Orion Amari, who had spent several years Chasing for the Appleby Arrows before taking up a Curse-Healer’s apprenticeship at St. Mungo’s. This bit was surprising- Severus had always wondered if the Hat had been a bit drunk when it sorted Amari Ravenclaw- but there must have been something more to the boy than empty mysticism if he’d been taken on as a Curse-Healer; the Masters at Mungo’s were notoriously selective about taking apprentices. 

The papers, according to Tom, were divided on whether Parkin’s return to play would finally put a damper on the Harpies’ winning streak. Charlie laughed out loud at this, and personally, Severus was inclined to agree; he thought, with a little surge of affection, that Ginny Weasley had turned into something indomitable. But if anyone could give her a run for her money, it was Parkin- she’d been singularly obsessed with Quidditch as a child, and that focus had made her a bit relentless. She’d been a polar opposite to gentle, spacey Orion Amari, who she’d snapped at like a barely-chained dog, but the boy had weathered it with a patience that Severus frankly found annoying. 

“Guess he waited her out,” Charlie said. “But married to Skye, and raising her daughters… best of luck to him!”

Minerva, Severus learned, Flooed into the Leaky every Saturday afternoon for tea, and Tom pinned Charlie down for a promise to stop by and see her when she was in. Dung Fletcher came through now and again, though he was apparently sitting in Auror custody for a 72-hour observation after breaking into the Hog’s Head’s cellar and drinking so much mulled mead that he lost control of his magic and nearly burnt the pub to cinders in a fit of spontaneous combustion.

It was surprisingly pleasant to sit and listen to the old man natter, and he found himself pleased to hear how his old students were faring. Names he hadn’t heard in years brought back a flood of memories. He was reminded of how many children he’d watched grow up. At the bottom of his mug, Tom stood up and stretched, and Charlie and Severus followed suit.

“Come back by an’ keep an old man company, Charlie-boy,” Tom said, clapping Charlie on the back again. “An’ you too, Severus. Don’t be a stranger, yeh hear?”

If his surprise at the familiarity showed on his face, Tom didn’t let on; he just patted Severus amicably on the arm before shuffling off to collect a row of empty mugs from the bar top. Severus followed Charlie out the back door of the pub and into the Alley proper, and Charlie rested a hand on his back again and left it there as they walked, shooting a hard look at anyone whose gaze lingered to long, and the thrill that shot through him at Charlie’s display of protectiveness briefly warred with a deeply-rooted instinct to avoid any gesture that might draw attention to himself. People could see him, and the way Charlie’s hand lingered on him would only make them look harder and Severus felt a cold panic crawling up his throat, and he felt exposed, but just as he was about to jerk away, Charlie stopped short in the middle of the pavement and tugged him by the sleeve into a little second-hand bookshop on the shopfront corner.

Severus was briefly surprised that Charlie was aware of the place- it was unmarked, other than a sign in the window proclaiming “Used Books,” and it was something of a hidden treasure in the Alley. The building was rather plain, with dingy, faded curtains covering the windows, but the interior was a three-story labyrinth of shelves, complete with false walls and hidden passageways that led into rooms so old that some of them remained uncharted even by Severus, who had been frequenting the store for over a decade. 

The owner, a fantastically elderly wizard with a yellowing beard and lank, straggly hair than fell down to the middle of his back, was snoring loudly in a chair behind the shop counter, his worn leather boots propped up beside the till. Charlie smiled fondly at the sight of him.

“That’s Martin,” he explained. “I don’t bother to wake him unless I find a book to buy… he can be a bit…”

“Cranky?” Severus offered. “Yes, I’m quite familiar with him.”

“Of course you’d know about this place,” Charlie said, smiling absently as he peered around.

The first floor of the shop was arranged in a sort of circular maze, with Martin’s counter at the center, and it contained fiction only, both Wizarding, and to Severus’ quiet delight, muggle novels. The next two floors were non-fiction only, and were expansive enough that it had taken Severus several months of repeated visits to learn the lay of the place. The staircase to the second floor was on the north wall of the building, and Charlie made a beeline for it, chatting amicably as he went.

“I’m looking to pick up Bartlett’s Compendium of the Venomous for Draco, and it’s been out of print for so long they can’t keep in in stock at Flourish and Blott’s. I had a copy, but I lost it in a flash flood when I had to go help bust that Horntail breeding mill in Indonesia…”

They ascended the stairway, emerging onto the second floor, a room with a cavernous main chamber and row after row of shelves that reached the very top of the twelve-foot ceiling. Off of the main chamber were a number of doors on each wall, and Severus knew from experience that they had been magically expanded to lead into secondary chambers almost as expansive as the one they were in currently. The shelves, Severus knew, were ordered into categories- the best way to navigate the place was simply to read the spines, as Martin couldn’t be bothered to put up any signs or directions. Asking for help required waking him up, which was an altogether miserable job, and so he’d simply learned to find what he was looking for by wandering around.

Charlie seemed to be well-practiced in the place, stepping over a pile of old hardbacks that appeared to have fallen from a high shelf, ducking in between two rows, and weaving his way out into a aisle that was blocked at the far end by what appeared to be a caved-in shelf.

“Hmmm… I know it’s around here somewhere… should be just past the Norse Love Ballads but before the Medicinal Leeching section… oh, here we are-”

He pushed aside a dustbin filled with what appeared the entire collected works of Gilderoy Lockhart and made his way to the far left end of the north wall. 

“Almost there,” he said, standing on his tip-toes to reach a high shelf.

Severus watched as he selected a nondescript hardback and pulled on it, and stepped back, surprised, as the shelf creaked ominously and swung inward. Charlie pushed the shelf back to reveal a corridor, its walls lined with more shelves, and Severus chuckled.

“I’m impressed,” he said, following Charlie into the darkened passageway. “A false wall I haven’t discovered.”

“This one’s a bit of a shortcut to the Magizoology section,” Charlie replied. “If you try to get to it through the A-wing off the main chamber, you have to go through Meteorology, and last time I went that way it hailed on me for twelve rows before I made it to Pre-Historic Erotic Cave Painting.”

“Hmmm,” Severus nodded sagely. “Meteorology is always a bit unpredictable.”

They emerged from the corridor into a small, lamplit room. Three walls were lined with shelves, and on the east wall was a large fireplace. In the center of the room was thick, floral sofa with a matching overstuffed chair and a fat, plushy footstool. 

“Most people get here through the Floo in the A-wing, but I like my shortcut better,” Charlie said, scanning the shelves. “I actually found about about this place from Fred and George- they get on well with Martin, oddly enough, and I think he gave them some kind of map. They know every crack and corner of the place.”

Charlie padded over with an armful of books and flopped down on the sofa, and Severus, feeling rather bold, sat down just beside him, and his stomach jumped a bit when Charlie leaned into his side. 

“I wanted to pick up Bartlett’s for Draco, but I was also thinking of getting him a novel or something for Christmas… he seemed to like Lord of the Rings… do you think he’d be interested in the Dune novels? I think he’d like all of the symbolism, but I’m wondering if he’d get lost in the stuff about muggle space-travel. I need to stop by Scribbulus’ too. I have Percy this year- we all switch off for buying presents now that there’s so many of us- and he hasn’t shut up all month about the self-transcribing peacock-feather quill that Luna got for Hermione last year, so I’m pretty sure that’s his way of dropping a hint…”

The feeling of contentment from earlier at Tom’s washed over him again as he listed to Charlie ramble. He’d worried at first that Charlie might be put off by his tendency toward silence- but Charlie didn’t seem to mind. He had a habit of spacing off himself, mulling over something quietly in his mind, and when they both fell silent, there was nothing uncomfortable in it. He leaned back into the sofa and listened to Charlie tell a story about the year that Fred and George came out with their WonderWitch line and tested all the products on themselves before heading to the Burrow for Christmas dinner. He found himself chuckling at the thought of the Weasley twins all done up in kohl and rouge. It was nice, Severus realized, to just listen to him. Too nice. 

He looked over at Charlie, who had propped his boots up on the stool and was flipping a particularly dusty volume on Grindylow social behaviors. Something about it was… too comfortable. Severus felt unsettled.

He tried to dispel the feeling as he helped Charlie search for a copy of Bartlett’s among the stacks.

“Don’t know why the fool publisher decided to stop printing it,” Charlie muttered under his breath. “The only volume that even comes close to a comprehensive study of venomous creatures and they decide to just stop printing… oh, here we go!” 

By the end of their trek through the store, they managed to find not only Bartlett’s, but a copy of first of the Dune novels for Draco, a stack of Potioneering back issues, the entire Dark Tower series, and a complete set of Watchmen comics, which Severus intended to slip under Dean Thomas’ mattress at Grimmauld Place- he’d never have admitted it, but he had grown a bit fond of the boy, the only other soul he’d met who appreciated the work of Arthur C. Clarke as much as he did. Their trip through the maze proved to be a directionless meander, and the more lost they got, the taller their stacks of books became. Finally, when neither of them could see the other over the piles in their arms, Charlie cast his patronus- a massive, barrel-chested Pit Bull Terrier- and they followed it as it led them through the shelves at a jaunty trot. 

“Only way I ever manage to find my way out of here,” Charlie said, smiling fondly down at the wagging animal as its misty form wavered and vanished, leaving them outside the door to the shop lobby. 

“So, I meant to ask you earlier, but Tom came over… I was wondering-”

Before he could finish, the sound of shouting from the lobby cut any chance at inquiry short.

“Sounds like someone woke Martin up,” Charlie muttered.

Sure enough, as they rounded a final shelf and stepped up to the counter, they found the old man shouting up at a massive, hairy figure in a thick moleskin overcoat.

“…don’ see what the matter is! I were only askin’-”

“Don’t you sass back to me, young man,” the wizened old wizard howled. “If’n you can’t find it on the shelf, we don’t got it. What do you think I am, a bloodhound? Like I know where every book is on every shelf…honestly, kids these days…”

“Hagrid?” Charlie piped up.

The figure turned, and the unmistakable hairy face of Hagrid the gamekeeper peered down at them, his perplexed frown relaxing into something like a bemused smile.

“Charlie! And…er…Professor Snape? Harry told me yeh’d been staying at old Grimmauld, but I thought he was havin’ me on…”

“Does this look like a cocktail bar?” Martin spat. “Either pay for your books or get out ‘o me shop. Don’t have time to stand here all day an’ listen to youse jack your jaws. Can’t you see I’ve got work to do?”

“Sorry, Martin,” Charlie said, depositing his armload of books on the counter in front of the old man. “We’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

Martin squinted up at him and softened, but only just. 

“Well, if it ain’t a little Weasley boy. My you lot have grown. Just saw your brothers in here…what’re they called, them two twins? And your mum was in a few weeks ago… what’s her name… Milly? Missy?”

He shrunk Charlie’s books and shoved them into a paper sack, pointedly ignoring Severus and Hagrid.

“How’s your ol’ Aunt Muriel doing? We went to school together, you know. Both of us in Ravenclaw. I took Muriel to the Yule Ball three years running, and boy, were she a looker. We had us a grand old time. Course, the real party started after the ball were over, if you catch me drift.”

Charlie coughed to cover what sounded like a a gag, but Martin carried on, ignoring him.

“Wore her robes cut just above her breast. Shapely, that Muriel was.”

The man winked a heavy-lidded eye, and grinned toothlessly up at Charlie, scooping his galleons up off the counter and sliding him his sack of books. He picked up Severus’ stack and slung them unceremoniously into another sack, snatching up the payment and shoving the sack into Severus’ chest. 

“All right, me boy. You see your Aunt Muriel, tell her Martin sends his regards.”

“I’ll do that, Martin,” Charlie ground out, avoiding the man’s eye. 

“And take this reprobate out with you,” he snapped, jerking his chin towards Hagrid.

Charlie seized Hagrid by the sleeve and shoved him toward the door, and they stumbled back out of the shop.

“You had to wake him up,” Charlie grumbled up at Hagrid, who looked somewhere between bewildered and apologetic. “I could’ve just left some galleons on the countertop for him and avoided another conversation about his sexual exploits with my hundred year old Aunt, but you had to go and wake him up.” 

Severus barked out a laugh, unable to help himself, and Hagrid eyed him, startled.

“Oh hello there, Weasley boy,” Charlie crowed, imitating the old man’s toothless cadence. “Can’t remember which one you are, or what your mum’s name is, or even what my own name is, but one thing I sure do remember is how your Aunt Muriel’s breasts looked in her ball robes about 90 some-odd years ago.”

Severus laughed out loud, and Hagrid stared at him as though he’d grown a pair of antlers. Somehow this made it funnier. Charlie carried on, stooping over and breathing heavily. 

“I own a three-story bookstore with titles dating back a thousand years, with only the most loose and haphazard organization, but God help you if you ask for help finding anything, ‘cause I’ll turn you into a flock of geese if you so much as look at me too hard. You better bring food and water with you, ‘cause if you get lost in there, I sure as hell won’t be coming to find you.”

They had stopped in the pavement, and Severus had to lean back against the brick shopfront to catch his breath from laughing. Charlie grinned at him, and Hagrid watched him warily, as though he might suddenly leap forward and bite him at any moment.

“That ol’ man a friend ‘o yours?” he asked, tearing his gaze away from Severus. 

“A friend of the family,” Charlie said. “If you hadn’t picked up on it, he was great friends with my Aunt Muriel.”

“Heh…sounded like they were quite… close,” Hagrid said, waggling his eyebrows at Charlie.

“Ugh. Don’t remind me. What’d you do to piss him off, anyway.”

“Asked if he had the new Vampire’s Apprentice on order, an’ he looked at me like I was out ‘o me mind.”

“Yeah, Martin doesn’t have much of anything more recent than the late 1800s, unless you happen to like muggle novels or back issues of academic journals.”

“Just my rotten luck,” Hagrid groaned. “Didn’ make it ter Flourish and Blott’s in time teh pre-order it, an’ now it’s already sold out. Gonna have ter wait fer the secon’ print. I knew I shouldn’t ‘a waited ‘till release day.”

Severus looked at Hagrid, curious. He’d never pictured the half-giant as much of a reader. 

“The Vampire’s Apprentice?” he asked. “Is that a wizarding novel?”

In unison, Charlie and Hagrid both whirled to stare at him on the spot; Hagrid was staring, jaw agape, and Charlie’s expression was something more akin to horror.

“Yeh mean yeh’ve never heard ‘o the Vampire’s Apprentice series?” Hagrid cried. “By Mary Sue Havisham?”

Charlie was mouthing something at him silently, his eyes wide and horrified, but Severus couldn’t make it out.

“Er…no,” he replied, feeling the strange weight of impending dread.

“Yeh can’t’ve… You mean yeh’ve never…”

Severus shook his head mutely, and he could see Charlie sigh heavily out of the corner of his eye.

“Well yeh can’t just go through your entire life without readin’ the Vampire’s Apprentice,” Hagrid declared, digging through the pockets of his overcoat.

“Here we are,” he said, pulling a battered paperback from an inside breast pocket and brushing something hairy off of the spine. 

“Really, Hagrid, it’s quite all right,” Charlie said. “Maybe after we’re done shopping I can come by the castle grounds and-”

“Nonsense!” Hagrid roared. “Severus is a man ‘o letters. The thought of Severus never knowin’ about… it’s… it just aren’t right…”

Before he could register the motion, Hagrid’s large, hamlike hands wrapped around him and Charlie both, pulling them close. He looked over at Charlie, who was rolling his eyes with a sort of resigned acceptance, and so he took a deep breath and steeled himself against the unexpected proximity. 

“Hagrid is Charlie’s friend,” he told himself. “You will not hex him. If you can survive the Dark Lord, you can survive this dunderhead.”

Up close, the man smelled like wet earth, dog fur, and the pungent smell of Tom’s house brew, which explained his current demeanor. He kept pace with them for the next three blocks, rambling passionately about what Severus assumed to be the plot of the novels, his diatribe peppered with speculation about the content of the latest installment. They made their way through the Alley, Charlie picking up the quill for Percy, a massive sack of coffee to mail back to his buddies at the reserve, and even though he didn’t have either of them for presents this year, new dueling gloves for Harry and Ron. 

“I saw Harry’s Auror-issues covered in little burns the other day, and I can only imagine what Ron’s must look like.”

By the time Severus had selected a tray of heirloom Singing Night-Wisteria seeds for Narcissa and a bell jar, which he intended to enchant later as a present for Draco, Hagrid had finished recounting the entire insipid plot, and had taken to reading from his copy aloud.

“I was crushed beneath the weight of ‘im,” Hagrid read. “His warm body burnin’ against me skin. His hard heat filled me, stretchin’ agains’ me silken walls, and he thrust deeper an’ deeper, carryin’ me ter the abyss of ecstasy. My legs wrapped around ‘is back, an’ I felt the dam of pleasure burst inside me.”

“God help me,” Charlie muttered. 

“What’s that?” Hagrid asked, pausing.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just… so inspiring, is all,” Charlie said quickly. “But really Hagrid, don’t read anymore, you’ll spoil it for Severus.”

They found themselves outside Florean Fortescue’s, and they paused to rest at the benches, where Charlie managed to wrestle Hagrid’s attention onto the topic of Christmas plans.

“You’re coming by the Burrow before dinner, right? Mum was planning on making another batch of cinnamon whiskey, and you know she won’t teach anyone else the charm but you.”

“Course I am. Gotta drop off presents an’ all. Me an’ Molly make the whiskey every year,” he said, leaning close to Severus to whisper it like it was supposed to be a secret. “After all the trials, Hermione went to the Wizengamot with me to clear meh name, yeh see.”

“Of course she did,” Severus replied drily. 

“Right brilliant, our Hermione,” he said, his ruddy face beaming proudly. “She gave ‘em what for about puttin’ me in Azkaban. Made them clear me name and everythin’. Means I’m allowed ter do magic again. Mr. Ollivander even went and fixed me old wand. So now it’s my job ter charm the whiskey every year with Molly.”

He seemed so pleased about this that Severus offered him a small, closed-lipped smile, and Hagrid grinned back at him, clapping him on the back.

“Glad ter see yeh’ve been doin’ alright, Severus,” Hagrid said. “Good thing yeh got Charlie hear lookin’ after yeh. He’ll do right by yeh, mark me words.”

Charlie blushed a bit, and it took Severus a moment to work out his meaning.

“Am I that obvious?” Charlie asked drily.

“Folks on low-flyin’ broomsticks could tell,” Hagrid replied solemnly. “I don’ mean ter pry or nothin,’ but yeah, Chuckie, yer pretty obvious.”

When Hagrid finally departed, Severus let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and Charlie smiled apologetically. 

“Sorry about Hagrid, he’s…”

“It’s alright,” Severus said. “It was… I’m glad to see him doing well. And that he got his wand back.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “Hermione really stepped up for him. I was at that trial, as a character witness. They didn’t even get a chance to call any of us up. It was hardly even a trial, just Hermione having her way with them. It’s nice she likes her work in Mysteries, but honestly I think she missed her calling in Law.”

“Miss Granger... she represents the absolute best of Gryffindor House. I regret that I was unkind to her, when she was my student,” he said, feeling his face heat at the admission. “It is one among many things that I wish I could take back.”

Charlie looked over at him, considering him for a time.

“It’s hard for me to imagine you being mean to her,” he said. “You were always so nice to me. I mean, sometimes you gave kids a hard time, but… I don’t know. You used to let me stay after class. I’m sure you had better things to be doing than answering my dumb what-if questions.”

“You were an uncommonly good student,” Severus replied. “You took a genuine interest in the class. And honestly… it was hard for me not to feel a bit fond of you after the time you crashed face-first into me trying to read while walking.”

“Oh, hell,” Charlie said, ducking his head, embarrassed. “I’d hoped you’d forgotten about that.”

Severus smiled again, and he found that the motion seemed to come more naturally. It was easy to smile at Charlie. Too easy. The sinking feeling that had beset him earlier in the bookshop returned, and he resisted the urge to fidget.

“Charlie?” he asked finally. “What Hagrid said, about you looking after me… did he think…?”

“Er… yeah,” Charlie replied. “I keep trying to talk to you about that… I was thinking about… what we talked about before. After the whole… sex magic thing. And I was wondering-”

But for the third time that day, Severus would be left wondering what, exactly, Charlie had been trying to ask.

“Shit,” Charlie said, jumping to his feet and gazing up the alley, his face hardening into focus. 

Bounding toward them in silver-blue streak was the misty shape of a dog, something large and shaggy that Severus couldn’t identify. 

“It’s Ron’s patronus. Something’s wrong.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on [Tumblr.](https://sallyapostrophes.tumblr.com/)


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